m ■ 



IZABETH WESTON TIMLOW 






Tboreau -.„ „ 

Seat f*r v Emerson 
''^ Seat 




DIngte Dell 
Brook Crossing 



MT. MONADNOCK TRAILS 

Laid out and developed by SCOTT A. SMITH 1894 to 1907 and as below 1907-8-' 

Charted by Geo. A. Parker 

Printed 1910 

By J. O. Austin - Sweet Water Trail 1907 - Green Carpet Trail, Paradise Valley 
Trail, and Inspiration Rock 1908 - Chamberlain Pool to Garnet Spring 1909. 
By H. A. Macgowan - Chamberlain Brook Trail 1907. 
By G. H. Noble - Dingle Dell Trail 1908. 



THE HEART OF MONADNOCK 



THE HEART OF 
MONADNOCK 



BY 



ELIZABETH WESTON TIMLOW, 
Author of "^ ?iest of Girls" etc. 

Illustrated from Photographs by 
Herbert W. Gleason 



''These gray crags 
Not on gray crags are hung. 
But beads as on a rosary 
In prayer and music strung.'' 
'Monadnock." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 



Boston 

B. J. BRIMMER COMPANY 

1922 



.CsTs 



Copyright, 1922 
By B. J. BRIMMER COMPANY 

Set up and printed. Published June, 1922. 



Printed in the United States of America 

JAfi22^23 



Cl A G 9 8 J3 G 



^/C'.^ / /t 






To 

Scott A. Smith 

and to the memory of 

George H. Noble, 

whose untiring and loving efforts 

especially helped to open Monadnock 

to its lovers 

this little book is 

affectionately dedicated by one who 

feels deeply in their debt. 



J 



THE HEART OF 
MONADNOCK 



"MoNADNOCK, lifting from his night of 

pines, 
"His rosy forehead to the evening star." 

Monadnock! Stately mountain, solitary 
sentinel of haunting beauty and intimate 
and irresistible allurement! Mountain 
loved of poets and artists; mountain which 
knew and loved in return the footsteps of 
Emerson and Thoreau and Thayer. 

A strangely individual mass it is in its 
calm isolation, dominating subtly the en- 
tire countryside. It does not rise to great 
heights as mountains go, but so bold is its 
long couchant outline, so stern is its splen- 
did solitude, so imposing is its brooding 
strength that a grandeur lies upon it 
that many a mightier mountain lacks. 



2 The Heart of Monadnock 

Hugely massed to draw the clouds, shaped 
through the deliberate roll of bewildering 
centuries, by hammer soft as snow flakes 
fall, it draws at last the heart from the 
bosom of its lovers. 

"Oh, wise man! hearest thou half it 
tells?" 

High above tree-line it lifts its mighty 
ridges, now blue, now gray, now darkly 
purple, now rose-flushed and amethyst and 
malachite. From the bold peak five vast 
shoulders, clearly defined, fall away in dif- 
ferent directions, and stretching between 
them are wide, greenclad hollows, some- 
times sharp and precipitous, sometimes 
shallow and broad. These rough, wild 
shoulders descend, now in stately ledges, 
now in sheer precipices, till their jagged 
outlines are lost in the thick mat of spruce 
which overspreads the steep sides. These 
undaunted little trees, gnarled and dwarfed 
by the fierce winter winds and biting New 
England tempests, cling stoutly with pas- 
sionate devotion to the mother-rock, send- 



The Heart of Monadnock 3 

ing their tough roots along the surface of 
the resisting granite, and pouring the 
smaller rootlets like molten metal into every 
crack and cranny. Further down the slopes 
their hard, cold emerald melts into sunny, 
mellow green of the maples and birches 
and poplars that flaunt their gay skirts 
around the mountain's base, like living 
flounces. 



A hundred years ago, or more, report 
says, these craggy and almost inaccessible 
ravines, as they were then, were lairs of 
wild wolf-packs whose prowlings played 
havoc with the woolly flocks far below. The 
desperate farmers at last combined to make 
an end of these trackless, inaccessible lurk- 
ing grounds and they set fire to the whole 
vast triangle. A Titanic conflagration! 
But out of this fierce battle-ground of 
flame and rock and crouching, murderous 
tangle, came at last with the healing years, 
to the vision of mankind, the rocky, tree- 



4 The Heart of Monadnock 

less heights, with the serene grandeur that 
is now Monadnock. 

How the poets have loved this mountain! 
How their genius has lifted it to such a po- 
sition as Mt. Soracte held of old in the 
heart of the early Romans ! Into his haunt- 
ing epic on Monadnock, the gentle Sage of 
New England crystallized his profound love 
for the inscrutable, Sphinx-like Spirit of 
the mountain — "Well-known, but loving 
not a name." Eagerly the lonely soul of 
Thoreau followed the "Climbing Oreads to 
their arcades." On the hearts of Long- 
fellow, Whittier, Channing, a host of kin- 
dred minds, the magnetic touch of the 
mountain fell and held them in its spell. 

"Monadnock, Wise Old Giant, busy with 
his 'sky affairs,' who makes us sane and 
sober and free from little things, if we trust 
him, — this Monadnock came to mean every- 
thing in the world that is helping and heal- 
ing and full of quiet. He never failed us." 

Thus came English Kipling under the 

mystic spell, in his Vermont home, whence 



The Heart of Monadnock 5 

he watched day by day, with growing devo- 
tion the silent Titan, resting against the 
distant New Hampshire horizon. 

The Wise Old Giant! To all who listen 
he speaks a varying tongue. Those who 
have ears may hear him. "Oh, Wise Man! 
hearest thou the least part?" 



There are many approaches to the heart 
of this Monadnock. Those who climb the 
rough main trail, merely to look from the 
peak, do not grasp even the fringe of its 
mysteries. Even to the dwellers on the 
spreading plains below, though it may be to 
them a vision of artistic delight, or as it was 
to Kipling, a mute Teacher, even to these, 
manifold as may be the many lessons the 
granite pile may offer them, but a tithe of 
its joy is known. They may know and love 
its ever-changing color and line and beauty; 
they may delight in its retreat and approach 
with the shifting whim of the atmosphere; 
they may see it now in the austere purity 



6 The Heart of Monadnock 

and remoteness of its winter garment of ice 
and snow, sparkling like a million dia- 
monds, or now impalpable, mysterious, 
dimly vast in a shroud of cloud, — but they 
may not, cannot, understand what it grows 
to mean to the mountain lover who dwells 
close to its shrine and knows it as a lover 
knows the heart of his mistress. Not only 
to look out from it, but to look deeply into 
it, gives us the inexhaustible lore that is 
hidden in the mountain's mighty heart. 

All through the sweeping forests that 
clothe the climbing, precipitous mountain 
sides, are innumerable woodland trails 
sometimes clearly defined, sometimes 
merely blazed and often almost invisible 
save to the trained eye ; up on the bare, wide 
cliffs above the tree-line the directions are 
only marked by tiny cairns — two or three 
stones placed one on the other. It is not 
hard for the inexpert to lose his way. Miles 
of these sun-flecked narrow paths thread 
through deep, quiet forests, broken con- 
stantly by the out-cropping crags, showing 



The Heart of Monadnock 7 

how slight is the covering that mother-earth 
has drawn over the bed-rock; lines of minia- 
ture cairns beckon along the calm and 
sunny cliffs; countless mossy nooks shel- 
tered by overhanging rock and huge tree 
sentinels invite the loiterer to rest ; up above 
in the sunshine, hundreds of stone-wrought 
couches upholstered with gray-green moss 
allure one. Up here one can gaze his fill 
at the grave, brooding Titan reigning su- 
preme, outlined against the ultramarine 
sky, giving his majestic salutation alike to 
distant sea and to encircling plain. 

Mute at first may be the Mountain Spirit. 
It has no words for the vagrant soul whose 
ears are plugged with earthly things. But 
to the weary heart which throws itself into 
those tender arms ; to the inquiring and the 
puzzled; to the wistful and the sorrowful; 
to the eager and searching; and above all 
to the passionately loving, — to all such, and 
soon, "Speaking or mute its silence hath a 
tongue." To the mountain-lover the mystic 
spirit comes like an invisible presence, 




ENFOLDED IS THIS QUAINT HOSTELRY BY LOVING MOUNTAIN-ARMS 



The Heart of Monadnock 9 

against the irregular cliffs that rise behind 
it, the straggling little mountain-house suns 
itself, sheltering season by season, the lov- 
ers of Monadnock. From this tiny plateau 
start nearly all the trails that wind up 
through forest and ravine. Closely en- 
folded is this quaint hostelry by loving 
mountain-arms of descending green which 
enfold it as the slopes decline gently to the 
south and west, so that the setting of the 
house resembles a wide green harbor. 

Up the road leading from the main thor- 
oughfare which is more than a mile and a 
half away, come the casual visitors day by 
day; those who will scramble up the moun- 
tain by the main trail, rejoicing if they ac- 
complish the ascent in record-time. But 
record-time and the Mountain Spirit have 
no common denominator. For most of 
these scrambling tourists the mountain is 
but a rough mass to be surmounted; stony 
paths to be trodden upon; a peak to be 
looked off from; a plateau to be eaten upon; 
crags to be descended from. But among 



10 The Heart of Monadnock 

these now and then are those who even if 
they come but for the single trip, would 
fain listen and look and who catch dim 
glimpses of a mystic world just out of sight. 
For these the mountain has its own whis- 
pered word; a revival of the heart; a 
scarcely understood, elusive something that 
lives like a clearly etched memory, with al- 
most a wonder at its vividness. 

But only to those who linger here week 
by week and year by year, held by the grow- 
ing and enchanting spell of the Wise Old 
Giant is given the Open Sesame to his gar- 
nered wisdom and strength. But one may 
stay at the little hostelry for many weeks 
and not be able to explore every threadlike 
path with all the twisting links and visit 
every nook he loves; for when the fall day 
comes when he must sighingly descend to 
ordinary life again, something has always 
been left to next year. 

But through the winter days that follow, 
there remains within the heart, all through 
the swirl of city life, with its hammering 



The Heart of Monadnock 11 

claims and its tangled experiences and 
its smiting sorrows, an inner slirine — a 
sort of Sabbatli of the soul, wliitlier the 
mountain-lover may retreat as to an unas- 
sailable refuge. The wild clamor of the 
world, it is true, may shut out for weeks at 
a time the memory of that peaceful altar; 
his tired ears may become sealed to the echo 
of that mystic voice that brought to him 
marvellous things; and then suddenly al- 
most without volition on his part, in some 
desperate moment he finds himself once 
more encompassed by the strange peace of 
that inner sanctuary. Again he learns that 
the strength of the mountain is indeed part 
of his very soul; that the whispers of tlie 
Wise Old Giant were no dream but a divine 
reality. 



12 The Heart of Monadnock 



II 



But "If winter comes sliall spring be far 
behind?" Up there in the north, on 
those frozen crags and ridges the magic 
cliemistry of nature is at work, "thawing 
snow flakes into flowers," while in the 
southern home of the Mountain-Lover the 
crocuses and tulips and the pansies break 
like flame. April. May. Then the time 
for the mountain comes at last. Out of the 
heat of southern June its lover returns to 

his own. 

Breathless he drinks in again the air of 
crystal limpidness; breathless he gazes with 
rapture at the unchanged cliffs awaiting 
him, lifting their serene fronts clad in pur- 
plish-gray from the surrounding sea of gay 
spring green. With bared head he stands in 



The Heart of Monadnock 13 

their presence. "Ages are tliy days, tliou 
type of permanence!" It is all a reality — 
and not a dream. 

Half intoxicated with pleasure, he flings 
himself on the needle-strewn ground bury- 
ing his face in its crisp brown fragrance. 
He stoops to lay a caressing hand on the 
broad, four-leaved white flowers of the 
bunchberries which carpet sunny open 
glades. Almost in a single thought he takes 
in all the coming delights. He knows that 
far up above, his foot will soon fall with 
light and loving pressure on the tiny, shiny 
leaves of the sturdy little mountain cran- 
berry, lining smooth little hollows and 
creeping up to the foot of towering rocks, 
their brave little rosy-white blossoms tell- 
ing cheerfully of the snow drifts beneath 
which they have lain warm and snug all the 
long stern winter that has just past. And 
he knows that high up in the little caves 
opening to the northeast there still lurk 
lingeringly some drifts of icy snow sullenly 
yielding to the high-wheeling chariot of 



14 The Heart of Monadnock 

Phoebus. And he remembers also the end- 
less, crowding ranks of blueberry bushes 
mantling all the spaces between the rocks 
up in the sunlight, with their close-set rose- 
touched clustering blossoms, promises of 
the pinky-blue succulence to come. Sheep- 
laurel is lending its magenta to the color 
scheme. The shad-tree still whitens the 
upper forests, though on the plains below, 
its white petals would long since have fallen. 
The limpid springs, full to the lip, lie in 
every rocky hollow, clearer than amber; 
gay little giggling brooklets are whisking 
along tiny rocky channels, babbling little 
mountain secrets as they flirt with their 
banks. He could hear them. Then grow- 
ing broader and more opulent and more 
occupied with their own affairs, they come 
tumbling down in miniature cataracts, 
spreading out here and there into broad 
pools to rest while they collect their forces 
for another mad excited little plunge. . « . 
And there is moss everywhere of every 
shade of melting green, cushioning rock and 



The Heart of Monadnock 15 

stone and bank. Tlie spruces are decorated 
with their yellowish-green tassels. The cool 
and exquisite chrysoprase-green of unfold- 
ing ferns embroider the woods. Gay bird 
notes still fill the air. Beauty, virescent, 
eager, beckoning, sparkling, intoxicates the 
senses. 



Every path beckons. Shall he go first on 
the well-worn trail to Point Surprise just 
to make perfectly sure that every dear stone 
is still out-cropping in the same place? 
Humming in unmusical tenor, just in the 
sheer joy of living, the Mountain-Lover 
springs up the rocky staircase upwards to 
the right. First he must swerve to see if the 
Iron Spring is functioning properly. Yes, 
the spring is as active as ever. Up the ris- 
ing ascent obliquely to the ridge he goes 
until the path turns sharply to the east 
where rising in front of one is seen a break 
in the trees and a wall of rock against the 
eky line. One quickly over-tops this and 



16 The Heart of Monadnock 

as the head comes above the line, it is Point 
Surprise indeed for a new comer, for he is 
on the edge of an unexpected precipice 
which defines the long length of the Pulpit 
Rock shoulder. Below is a sheer drop, 
broken as it descends by irregular, spruce- 
covered ledges. Here one looks off into 
misty distance towards the east, across a 
softly undulating landscape, over shimmer- 
ing lakes and receding hills, blurred against 
the horizon line, — bathed at this hour of 
the late afternoon in dreamy ethereal blue. 
Here and there appears a white and slender 
spire; roofs of outlying farmhouses and 
scattered villages break through the thick 
greens; ribbon-like roads wind across the 
valleys. Tender, peaceful, serene. 

The climber drinks in all the familiar 
beauty with avid delight; with the sun at 
his back the colors have marvellous values. 
He pats the worn rock with affection — even 
though this spot is far too popular ever to 
detain him long. He looks to right and left. 
Shall he go down to the right towards the 



The Heart of Monadnock 17 

Mattcrliorn and Hello Rock and pursue the 
fascinating tangle of paths that thread the 
lower reaches of the precipice? Or shall 
he, today, keep to the left along the Cliff 
Walk, towards Emerson Seat and Thoreau 
Rock? He chooses the upland trail, and 
takes his rejoicing steps slowly, lingeringly, 
in sheer abandonment of pleasure, along the 
cliff, where for a long distance the trail 
creeps saunteringly close to the edge of the 
green gulf. With every northward step and 
turn of the cliff the landscape changes. New 
lakes gleam out; new horizon lines of rip- 
pling ranges flow to the northeast, towards 
Peterboro', sleeping in its quiet valley. 
Peterboro', whose prosaic name is musical 
with the rhythm given by the Master, whose 
genius found its home there. Here and 
there the climber pauses to look from the 
intimate detail of beauty on the left hand, in 
the ridge itself, where the trees in their 
sunny spring garments cling close to roman- 
tic gray walls of rock, and where sequestered 
nooks appeal, carpeted luxuriously with 



18 The Heart of Monadnock 

moss, back to the flowing, misty beauty far 
below him. 

He comes to the point where the Cliff - 
path crosses the Thoreau trail which leads 
up from the house on the other or west 
side of the ridge. High in front looms the 
brown mass known as Emerson Seat and 
just below it the other which is called Thor- 
eau Rock. He could turn across here 
and he would drop down to the house in 
ten minutes for all this previous saunter- 
ing has been like taking the two long sides 
of a very acute-angled triangle. But though 
it is getting towards supper time and an un- 
roiiiantic mountain appetite assails him, he 
is not quite ready to turn back yet. He 
takes the Thoreau trail for a short distance 
across the valley of the ridge, then turns 
sharply to his right and up the little crevasse 
in the steep, bald rock; across this he goes 
and into the woods at the Chipmunk-trail — 
but not along its whole distance which 
would lead him too far this evening. In- 
stead he scrambles down the swift descent 




THOREAU'S SEAT 



The Heart of Monadnock 19 

known — and not euphemistically — as Do- 
Drop -Down, which leads him through deep 
woods to the house . . . But there will be 
tomorrow and another after that. Weeks 
of tomorrows ! 



The Mountain-Lover each year renews his 
acquaintance with his mountain by linger- 
ing degrees ; like a lover coquetting with his 
mistress he dallies over its approaches, tak- 
ing now this side, now that, seeking out 
favorite haunts, smiling happily, and con- 
tent to be smiled on without words at first, 
as he alternately draws nearer and recedes. 
The love, the whispered confidence, the de- 
light in nearness all await him, but like an 
epicure, he at first just sips his pleasure. 
These early days are like the bouquet on 
wine. 



All last night there was a deluge of June 
rain ; one thunder storm after another. This 



20 The Heart of Monadnock 

morning the brooks will be in their glory, 
and today therefore, the way must be to 
the west. Beyond the old barn and under 
areading trees threads a tiny path leading 
to all the trails on Monte Rosa, and this the 
saunterer takes till he comes to the path 
that skirts the spur and leads him to Monte 
Rosa brook. Long before he comes in sight 
of it he hears its miniature thunder and he 
plunges down the last sharp little descent 
as eagerly as if he had never seen tremend- 
ous mountain cataracts on mighty ranges. 
The beloved little brook is tearing along 
joyously, full from bank to bank; the 
mossy stepping-stones are submerged and 
their tops show green and shining below the 
water. Down the bank the loving explorer 
takes his slow way stopping every few mo- 
ments to delight over some slight turn of 
the baby-cataract as it flings itself petu- 
lantly down some great descent of some ten 
feet or so in mimic fury, then as if laugh- 
ing softly to itself like a mischievous child 
it extends its arms gaily to mossy banks on 



The Heart of Monadnock 21 

each side of the wider bed in which it now 
finds itself. 

Witching Undines throng here; the 
Mountain-Lover knows it and plainly hears 
their exultant peals of elfin laughter; he 
turns his back every now and then to the 
stream ostentatiously, ever hoping that un- 
warily they will throw off the cloak of invisi- 
bility which they swiftly assumed when they 
heard his first footsteps on the banks of 
their fairy haunts. He catches their mock- 
ing laughter, but he never can turn quite 
quickly enough to catch the glimpse he 
craves. The edge of white foam that fringes 
the brown-green mantle is all he actually 
sees. He appeals to the saucy nymphs re- 
proachfully ; he holds out his hands entreat- 
ingly; he promises solemnly not to tell — as 
if mere words could ever tell! — to another 
mortal of their mocking buoyant beauty 
flirting its sparkling drops through the crys- 
tal June air, if they will lift for just one in- 
stant the pied cloak of amber and green that 
conceals their elusive gayety. 



22 The Heart of Monadnock 

''No!" he plainly hears them shout gib- 
ingly m tinkling notes. "No!" and ''No!" 
and "No!" He is sure from the sound of 
their scudding footsteps, scurrying over the 
surface of the water, that they are whirling 
all hands around ; then he guesses that they 
are breaking ranks and stooping to scoop 
up water in their slender hands to fling it 
over him mockingly in radiant spray, as he 
springs threateningly on a rock in the midst 
of the Liliputian stream. Those impish 
nymphs! The saunterer laughs and stoop- 
ing in his turn he gathers up slippery hand- 
fuls of icy amber water and defiantly flings 
it back at the little waterfall, as it just here 
loses its footing and slides down on its back 
over a broad slanting rock, well smoothetl 
by all the myriads of other little cataracts 
that have lost their own footing in the self- 
same spot and have tumbled down in the 
same ignominious manner. Any normal cat- 
aract, big or little, prefers to leap down in 
its own daring fashion in one swift 
plunge . . . Frisky, tantalizing little sprites! 



The Heart of Monadnock 23 

But it is something to be sure tliey are there, 
even if they refuse to reveal themselves to 
mortal vision. 



This morning is a day radiant with con- 
centrated essence of June and sunshine and 
brown needles and young ferns and freshly 
wet earth and pungent woodsy smells and 
the sheer joy of living. Today it shall be — 
say the Sidefoot path as far as the Noble 
trail, then up by that to the ridge, then 
along the crest to Pulpit Rock; perhaps back 
by the steep Hedgehog path that tumbles 
straight down by sharp-edged, broken rock, 
from under the Pulpit itself. Or perhaps 
on to the Four Spots and back around by 
the Green Carpet trail. Oh, anywhere! 
The Mountain-Lover therefore betakes him- 
self first to the Sidefoot path where it winds 
obliquely upwards to the left, making its 
way across a bed of pale-green, almost trans- 
parent ferns, avoiding a tree here and get- 
ting itself around a rock there ; and then lift- 



24 The Heart of Monadnock: 

iiig itself up a steeper bit to the point wliere 
the Noble trail diverges ; the latter clambers 
uncompromisingly straight up the wooded 
cliffs, mounting abrupt masses of rock that 
are like long stone staircases; on and up 
threads the tiny path through the low-grow- 
ing spruces, emerging now and then on out- 
cropping ledges which constitute one of the 
many charms of wandering around on Mon- 
adnock, giving repeated delicious vistas of 
the out-lying world. One is never long 
shut away from inspiring open stretches, 
even in deep woods. If not a ledge, then 
some huge rock-sentinel heaves high its 
great head . . . Up and still up scrambles 
the ambitious little trail — the Noble trail — , 
only occupied in getting itself up to the 
heights as directly as possible . . . One 
never treads it without a tender thought of 
its gallant-souled maker. The world seemed 
colder when he left it. Does not the great 
Mountain-Spirit itself miss his presence and 
his love? 

The path finally with a last aspiring jump 



The Heart of Monadnock 25 

springs above tree-line and climbs onto the 
back of the dolphin-like crest; there it con- 
tentedly merges itself in the Bald Rock trail 
which takes its own climbing way to the 
huge bulk of Pulpit Rock. From the junc- 
tion of the trails the way lies on the top of 
the ridge, with the world spread out on both 
sides. The north is still shut away by Pul- 
pit Rock, looming high in the near distance. 
More clearly now are seen the Peterboro' 
hills undulating in a fascinating blue line 
into the horizon. Far below, closer against 
the sheltering mountain, lies the Ark, half 
enshrouded in its clustering trees, place of 
quaint delight to its own loving sojourners. 
From the Ark comes the path that is 
known as the ''Red Cross Trail" from its 
picturesque marking. Looking down at it 
the climber follows its course in fancy across 
the pastures far below, along the romantic 
banks of Mead's brook, which having 
danced and scrambled down in gay leaps 
and daring dives from Monadnock itself, 
now, fuller and deeper and beginning to feel 



26 The Heart of Monadnock 

its importance, goes singing on its way 
through dim green woods of hemlock and 
maple and oak. In imagination the climber 
can see the needle-strewn way striking up 
some steep pitch, beside the frolicking 
stream, pausing now to take a loop and find 
the Spring that Will Hyde found, then 
sturdily again attacking the abrupt heights, 
up and up and up, the red cross steadily 
pointing out the way. Many a time has the 
climber taken that path and he retraces it 
in memory, looking down at the sunny, smil- 
ing valley below. 

Out beyond glimmers Thorndyke Pond in 
its shining length. On every side dots of 
dancing sunshine punctuate the landscape 
from gleaming sheets of water. The climber 
pulls off his hat and waves it in a general 
greeting to each loved landmark hailing him 
from far and near. 

Then, finally, in his onward course comes 
the last steep, but not difficult ascent wind- 
ing past the old Lead mine, up ledge after 
ledge till he tops the highest and at last 



The Heart of Monadnock 27 

stands on the grave and stately mass that 
juts out, when seen from the west, like a 
great promontory. Tradition says that when 
all Monadnock itself was still forest-clad 
and the haunt of wolf-packs, before the re- 
vealing flame had given its splendor to the 
world, this bald, uprising mass on the long 
south shoulder was the one open point. 
From here the line of the crest drops again 
gradually northward to the deep indentation 
where lies a little cross-valley between it 
and the mountain. On the other side of 
this little cross-valley, rise sharply small 
precipices one after another as the great 
peak begins to lift itself from the trees. 

The Mountain-Lover flings himself down 
against a rock with his face to the north. 
It is the nearest view he has taken of his 
Giant since his arrival. He holds his breath 
a little. Though he knows every line and 
slope and crag and drop of that beloved 
height, he takes his first thrill all over 
again, plus all the later thrills, as he gazes. 
Over the summit, deeply, ineffably blue, 



28 The Heart of Monadnock 

bends the June sky caressingly; to the north- 
west a pile of rosy cumuli mounts just be- 
hind a craggy point, clearcut in outline 
against the pure translucent blue. Color 
deep, soft, thrilling. The northern sky 
looks like a profound ocean of melting 
depths, through which could one float 
forever. 

And there is the eagle! Soaring in its 
strange and stately flight with no visible mo- 
tion of its wide-spread wings, it wheels and 
mounts and sinks and rises again, as if with 
the sheer joy of swinging far aloft in the 
glowing light. The climber again pulled 
off his soft hat, this time in greeting to his 
old friend; for years a pair have made 
their home here on the mountain, out on 
the Dublin Ridge, — apparently a preempted 
spot for never are others of their kind seen 
here. The young are evidently sternly 
driven forth year by year to fare in less 
picturesque places. Monadnock would not 
seem quite itself without the floating, ma- 
jestic flight of those two wheeling sentinels. 



The Heart of Monadnock 29 

Long the Mountain-Lover lay back 
against the rock, facing the calm breadth of 
the summit, gazing at it with love welling 
up in his heart and listening once more with 
freshly attuned ears to what the grave, 
mighty pile had to tell him. Wordless are 
its impressions as yet; but an indefinable 
calm slowly smooths out tangles in his tired 
brain and unties knotted mental muscles. 
He dreams — and is at rest. When he rises 
at last from the crisp moss, and stretches 
himself with lazy delight he feels years 
younger. The magic of th^ mountain has 
well begun. 



30 The Heart of Monadnock 



III. 



On his first visit to Monadnock years ago, 
the Mountain-Lover had learned its first 
concrete lesson. Not yet wholly familiar 
with the winding trails that seemed innumer- 
able, he delighted in wandering here and 
there to discover them and their many con- 
nections by himself. On a June morning of 
vivid blue and green and gold, crisp as only 
mountain air is ever crisp, he found him- 
self loitering along one enticing little sun- 
spattered path after another under the 
Black Precipice. He had gotten onto the 
Tenderfoot trail and then in some fashion 
his meandering way had brought him to the 
Fairy Spring. It was a little emerald-lined 
grotto formed by a deep shelf at about the 
level of his eyes, with a roof of overhang- 



The Heart of Monadnock 31 

ing rock, uptipped and moss-covered; over 
this fell the gauziest sheet of silver water, 
glinting against the richly cushioning moss, 
veiling the elfin depths within. At the back 
of the grotto, which is hardly two feet deep, 
lies a minute pool in which Titania and all 
her fairy troop disport themselves in the 
moonlight — we are all entirely sure — to the 
music of the silver tinkling of the sparkling 
water as it falls, in cadences all too fine for 
mortal ears, into the soft emerald velvet of 
this tiny dell of enchantment. 

The delight of the bit of magic beauty 
held the explorer breathless. He had caught 
the scene at its fairest and he hung over it 
enchanted, for he had come upon it unex- 
pectedly. He had it in mind to find a trail 
that he had been told wandered up from 
this spot towards the Sweet-Water Spring 
and then on around a little-used path, skirt- 
ing Monte Rosa until one reached the north- 
west side of that friendly little peak which 
rises abruptly from the southwest shoulder 
of Monadnock. Having feasted his eyes on 



32 The Heart of Monadnock 

the fairy nook, the climber betook himself 
therefore up a steep, obscure little path that 
creeps up the ledge back of it and there 
pursued something that looked vaguely like 
a trail. Soon, however, it faded away al- 
together, and the direction was marked only 
by half-overgrown blazes on the tree trunks. 
At last he seemed to come to the end of 
these also ; he could see no blaze beyond the 
one by which he stood, peering forward. 

He went back to see if he had mistaken 
the last marks; no, plainly they were old 
blazes though hardly discernible from mere 
knot-holes till he stood close to them. 
Clearly the trail had led to this point though 
here it seemed to have dropped into the 
earth. On the left the ground fell sharply 
into sun-dappled hollows under great trees 
which reared noble heads high. There was 
little underbrush here, but the slope fell 
with such suddenness that the desired trail 
certainly could not be down below. On the 
right towards the mountain was a thick 
tangle of spruces on broken cliffs for he 



The Heart of Monadnock 33 

was just at the line where the deciduous 
trees change quite abruptly to evergreens. 
No trail to be seen up through them. The 
last blaze was just here at the foot of a 
rough little precipice, which was irregu- 
larly backed by a higher one at a ledge cov- 
ered with gray-green moss. Scrubby little 
spruces grew thickly; the whole side of 
Monte Rosa to the right lifted itself level 
after level. Where could the little path have 
betaken itself? How could it have wan- 
dered off so completely that every trace of 
it was lost? The explorer peered more in- 
tently around. It was not particularly im- 
portant, yet he was set on finding that trail. 
There was that ledge just above at the level 
of his head, the first step so to speak on the 
ascent; was that a tiny cairn on it? No, 
mere accident. Two moss-covered stones 
casually lying against each other. But this 
mark by which he stood was surely a blaze? 
Oh, yes, though the rough lips had nearly 
grown together. 



34 The Heart of Monadnock 

It was a delicious spot; a wilderness of en- 
trancing bits lay below him, open vistas 
through the stately trees. A minute and 
saucy brook danced near him. The general 
slope descended by roughly-dropping, 
brown-needled shelves, all sun-freckled and 
spicy-smelling. At last the Mountain-Lover 
threw himself on the ground with his face 
half towards the heights, for, just visible 
through the sweep of thinning growth above, 
was to be seen a veiled glimpse of the west 
side of Monadnock gleaming pinkly through 
the green screen. He was warm with his 
climb and with his search, for the place was 
entirely sheltered from any breeze. For a 
time he lay there relaxed against a tree, 
with its springing roots like an arm chair, 
reflecting with lazy satisfaction that every 
spot into which one casually dropped 
seemed to fit itself as if with premeditated 
design to the comfort of the tired human 
frame. His cushion of dry needles seemed 
peculiarly elastic; the trunk was just the 
right slope. Juncoes called through the 



The Heart of Monadnock 35 

woods; purple finches winged their flight 
here and there. A veery swung near inquis- 
itively. Placidly he let himself drift away 
out on the silence that was broken only by 
woodland sounds. He half forgot the path 
for which he had searched. After all, what 
matter? . . . 

Presently something seemed playing with 
his consciousness and he idly turned his 
head to see if by chance someone had crept 
near unobserved and unheard. No one was 
visible; only the gray-brown tree trunks and 
swaying branches and slender moosewood 
and out-cropping rocks were about him. Yet 
after a moment of listening, a voice — or 
rather a mere consciousness of words — 
seemed to sift into his ears, and the words 
were a long-forgotten fragment of an old 
Latin sentence. He found himself haltingly 
repeating a line he had not thought of since 
his schoolhood days. 

"Perge, qua via ducat'' "Go on, where 
the way will lead you." 



36 The Heart of Monadnock 

What was its connection? Who whis- 
pered this to him, bringing the words up 
out of long-submerged layers of life? Vague, 
baffling recollections assailed him as he 
dropped back against the trunk, steadfastly 
looking far above into tree-veiled heights 
which were now darkly blue with drifting 
shadow from some floating cloud-mass in 
the heavens. Who said that — "Go on, 
where the way will lead you?" Where? 
When? What teasing memory played with 
him, bringing those apropos words with 
their elusive setting? 

He looked dreamily upwards and slowly 
he seemed to be floating backwards through 
the centuries, drifting across the seas to the 
sapphire Mediterranean. No, not sapphire, 
as he visioned it at this instant, but black- 
gray with one of its wild tornadoes, raging 
with a mad blast of whirling fury. He had 
seen it thus once, and had himself nearly 
been a victim to its brief, terrific rage. Why 
did that aspect come up rather than the 
smiling, misty, azure beauty he knew far 



The Heart of Monadnock 37 

better? . . . He seemed to see a shipwreck, — 
not the one in which he had been somewhat 
intimately concerned — but a shipwreck of 
quaint, archaic galleys, whose high decks 
swarmed with oddly cloaked men, wearing 
high, peaked caps ; feet and legs were bound 
with queer, sandal-like affairs nearly to the 
knee. He perceived struggling bodies in 
the swirling, boiling waters — one picture 
swiftly flashing over the next — and then he 
saw straggling ones beating a difficult way to 
a rocky, inhospitable coast. What were all 
these kaleidoscopic pictures? He seemed 
to see deep curving shores between stern 
promontories, with woods growing to the 
waters' edge, and a recessed harbor guarded 
by the jutting cliffs . . . Where did this all 
take place? — this queer phastasmagoria? 
Where? Where? He struggled for recol- 
lection . . . 

He seemed to see a camp made by these 
drenched, half -drowned mariners; he saw 
fire kindled — by what agency, he had no 
idea. He saw one of the band, who seemed 



38 The Heart of Monadnock 

lo be the leader, detaching himself and 
standing out before the others, with ringing 
words of encouragment and cheer. He even 
heard a dim sentence in his ears. "Oh, ye, 
who have suffered heavier things, the gods 
will give an end to this also!" It was — it 
was — what? Of course! He knew. The 
picture had been etched for all time by that 
vivid word-artist, Virgil of the golden sty- 
lus. And the leader of the shipwrecked 
band was no other than his old friend, 
Aeneas — Aeneas of the inexhaustible tears! 
It was the moment when the shipwreck had 
been induced by the crafty machinations of 
the mighty Juno — her bribe to old Aeolus, 
of the "fairest of women to have and to 
hold" having bereft the Keeper of the 
Winds of his allegiance to his rightful over- 
lord, with the consequent unloosing of the 
tempestuous elements and the devastation 
that ensued on this wild African shore. 

The observer saw at the moment no signi- 
ficance in the vision but amusedly wondered 
what had recalled these dim memories from 



The Heart of Monadnock 39 

deeply submerged fields. He traced their 
lines as they grew clearer, emerging from 
long hidden recesses. Apparently the quest 
of much-hindered Aeneas for ever-fleeing 
Italy was now definitely over and he him- 
self was at the mercy of the three Grim 
Sisters. Most of his storm-tossed fleet was 
nowhere visible, having been surely en- 
gulfed by the raging tempests from which he 
and the few battered, dripping followers 
had rescued themselves — with what difficul- 
ty! They alone seemed to survive univer- 
sal wreckage on a wild and uninhabited 
coast. 

The watcher, beneath his quiet trees, as if 
under some spell, absorbedly regarded 
Aeneas as he went forth later with his Faith- 
ful Achates to explore the hostile region, by 
which his supposed destiny — to found the 
Roman Race — seemed to be now definitely 
blocked. There was no way out. His long 
trail had come to a hopeless end ... At 
the words the climber glanced up smiling 



40 The Heart of Monadnock 

at the thwarting little ascent where his own 
trail ended. 

Desolately Aeneas and Faithful Achates 
mounted the first steep places and stood 
peering eagerly through the wild forest 
scene where no human being seemed to have 
stood before. That dim track yonder must 
have been made by some wild beast of the 
forest. Plainly there was no way out. The 
trail ended. But suddenly, behold! down 
from the wooded heights above them came 
running lightly a radiant huntress, her rai- 
ment girt to her knee, and on her back a 
quiver of arrows while in her hand she held 
a slender bow; her shining hair was caught 
up under her pointed hunting-cap of green. 
In this human guise came Aphrodite, his 
goddess-mother, to the rescue of her son, 
unknown, to guide him in his despair. She 
answered his eager questions. No, the way 
was not blocked. Yes, there was a way out. 
This was not the unhabited wilderness 
which he thought it. That dim track was 
really a path and not made by prowling 



The Heart of Monadnock 41 

creatures of the night. Try it! Take the 
path he saw indicated, follow it, and when 
he reached the top of the obscuring ridge, 
he would see suddenly beyond him a won- 
derful and welcome sight; a rising city fair 
and mighty, the work of the daring, far- 
visioned Dido; at the hands of the mighty 
Queen, who was at once pioneer, leader, 
ruler and wholly woman, he would find suc- 
cor and assistance, for she having known 
sorrow herself had learned its divinest les- 
son — how to pity others. For how were 
pity learned except by pain? The huntress 
points again to the slender, hardly-seen trail 
leading upwards. 

"Do not say this leads nowhere," finished 
Aphrodite smiling, 'Terge, qua via ducat. 
Take the next step!" 

The Mountain-Lover sprang to his feet; 
he shaded his eyes with his hand, peering 
down the long golden lanes between the 
ranks of trees . . . Surely he caught a 
glimpse of the radiant goddess-mother, dis- 
appearing in the rosy glowing mist which 



42 The Heart of Monadnock 

veiled her as her garments flowed to her 
feet. He seemed to follow her as she rose 
like a cloud among the tree-tops out of 
sight. Aeneas and Faithful Achates staring 
after her, turned when she had vanished in 
the ethereal blue and obediently pursued 
the path she had pointed out. Surely he 
himself saw them as they grew smaller 
among the trees till they were lost in the 
shadows. 

Across his eyes the gazer drew his hand 
confusedly. So vivid had the vision been 
that he almost heard the shouts, as the two 
had gained the imaged height and saw res- 
cue beyond. He looked up at the Wise Old 
Giant benignly gazing back at him through 
the trees. 

"Your magic!" he cried accusingly. "You 
whispered to me 'Perge'! Well — I follow." 
He looked at the ledges and at the mossy 
stones, but he held his steps a moment 
musingly. "There is more in this than 
merely finding that particular path! Let 
me see. 'Perge, qua via ducatJ I will have 



The Heart of Monadnock 43 

another look at that possible cairn. At any 
rate I will take the next step, whether it ap- 
parently leads anywhere or not. That is 
what the mountain tells me." 

In a moment he climbed on the little ledge 
beside the stones that had attracted his eye. 
Yes, he could now see they had been pur- 
posely put together but so long ago that on 
them lay the deceiving moss ; and a few steps 
beyond, but where he could not see them 
from below, lay another little pile of stones 
pointing out the way around a slight curve 
— all hidden from one standing below. It 
was the little trail he had been seeking, now 
showing plainly with well-marked blazes 
again, as he went on; it had all depended 
on that little obscure cairn, pointing the 
way from below . . . He stopped a moment 
to put another stone on it, and then went 
meditatively on his loitering way, his 
thoughts drifting over many things. 

How constantly life arrived at some blind 
place and seemed to stop abruptly with a 
sharp "No Thoroughfare." It would not 



44 The Heart of Monadnock 

be a question of getting lost and going 
astray; not a choice of right or wrong; or 
of right and not-quite-right. Simply blank- 
ness where there should have been an in- 
dication; a point where one stood be- 
wildered, since in looking back each step of 
the way seemed to bring one steadily to just 
that place. Such experiences as he had in 
mind did not involve the question of shirk- 
ing an issue, however hard; on the contrary, 
nothing had been more desired than to go 
straight ahead, let the difficulties be what 
they might. How intently he had at such 
times searched for the clue! Sometimes 
with long effort he had succeeded in finding 
it — but often enough he could discern no 
clue to the path at all — nothing at any rate 
that looked in the least like one. Not even 
as likely as the mossy stones that had de- 
ceived him below. At such times he had 
reluctantly abandoned the quest. No Thor- 
oughfare. No use taking that simple step. 
It could lead nowhere. Yet — had he not 
sometimes had the mortification of seeing 



The Heart of Monadnock 45 

others come to the same spot in the lost 
trail — and find the way through? With 
keener eyes — or with more faith — accept- 
ing the unlikely indication? Had Robert 
Louis meant something like this when he 
prayed that fervent prayer which seemed to 
well up from the depths of life, "Oh, Lord ! 
Give me to see my opportunities!" That is, 
to see the not always obvious cairns on the 
track of life, none too plainly marked at the 
best. 

The Mountain-Lover began to think more 
and more concretely. He soon came to the 
Sweet Water Spring and knelt to drink of 
the tiny icy pool, protected by the loving 
care of other mountain-lovers. He went on 
his way to the left, still slowly winding 
around Monte Rosa, following the dim little 
path as it twisted around the out-jutting 
cliffs and through the woods till the maples 
and birches gave way as ever to the stunted 
and gnarled little spruces, leading with the 
usual suddenness out on the broad open 
rocks to the west. Onward swept beckon- 



46 The Heart of Monadnock 

ing cairns, leading across to where the Up- 
per Trail to the Great Pasture dipped again 
into the woods, the path which drops with 
romantic abruptness down ledge after ledge, 
till it reaches at last the Great Pasture lying 
far below, tapestried with its blueberry 
bushes and grassy tufts. But the climber 
kept to the upland, twisting his way up and 
up, scrambling across the rock-faces as best 
he might. He could not now see the Giant 
for he was hidden for the moment behind 
the nearer height of Monte Rosa, but it was 
beyond and ever beckoning. 

At a high point he dropped again on a 
mossy spot, leaning back against a rock. He 
often said that his wanderings on the moun- 
tain consisted of progressive sitting-down. 
Not that he was tired but simply to absorb 
the beauty and the wonder that flowed from 
the everlasting heights, and to think out his 
thoughts. For this reason he was more 
often than not, alone in his idle roaming, 
for to grow intimate with the mountain- 
spirit one must seek him in solitude and 



The Heart of Monadnock 47 

must be willing to sit still and listen. He 
never insists on being heard and he never 
interrupts conversations. But trust him and 
he never fails you. 

''Perge, qua via ducat.'' He repeated the 
words musingly. "Yes. A law of life. 
Simple — like all laws. I wonder if there 
is ever a real 'No Thoroughfare' if one 
faithfully keeps to the path as he sees it 
through life? Is it that one, going with 
dulled eyes, fixed only on some precon- 
ceived notion of where he thinks the path 
should go at some given point, simply misses 
the clue? Which may be there if he could 
see it? Take the next step — no matter if 
for the moment it seems to lead nowhere. 
Make sure you have been right, of course, 
up to that point. As sure as you can . . . 
Lord! Give me to see my opportunities! 
Not to miss my cairns! Give me, Lord, 
the seeing eyes!" 

His flowing thoughts were apt to form 
themselves unconsciously into the breath 
of a prayer. On the mountain one prayed 



48 The Heart of Monadnock 

instinctively whether or not one did so at 
other times. The Unseen lay very close to 
one's heart. 



The Heart of Monadnock 49 



IV 



Today the Mountain-Lover came loiter- 
ing again in this direction. With sandwiches 
in his pocket, he had the day before him — 
which he loved. As always when his feet 
took this now familiar course that first day 
returned to his mind with fresh vigor. How 
many perplexities it had helped him 
through! How often since that day, — re- 
membering those slighted little mossy stones 
that lay at the critical place where the path 
seemed to vanish — he had taken confidently 
that next step in life although he had seen 
nothing beyond. But when he had taken it, 
the next lay open to his view, — and then 
the next. Perhaps for some distance only 
one visible at a time, although he so longed 
to see the whole way! It needed faith. It 



50 The Heart of Monadnock 

was not always easy to go on, just feeling 
the way with his feet, so to speak. ^'Perge, 
qua via ducat/' But the necessary thing 
was to go on — go on. The next cairn. It 
is there. Have a free mind. Find it. Be 
unprejudiced. Try anything that looks like 
a cairn on the road of life. Have the main 
goal clearly in one's vision. The great def- 
inite end. Then keep an unprejudiced at- 
titude towards the route itself. Sometimes 
it is just a question of what Carlyle wrote: 
''Do the duty that lies nearest thee ; the next 
will already have become clearer." All the 
Masters had perceived this elemental truth. 
The only trouble is that it is all so plain, — 
this law — that one does not always perceive 
it — like the famous one who could not see 
the forest for the trees. 

The walker stopped at the Sweet Water 
Spring to drink from its little rocky cup. 
Who could ever pass it? Then again to the 
left — a way he was much more apt to take 
than the more direct path to the right — for 
few take this one and he loved it. On again 



The Heart of Monadnock 51 

in the winding way, diagonally upward till 
the deciduous trees gave way grudgingly to 
the evergreens, and he came out well up on 
the steep expanse. He never took any 
i?pecial route across this face of the little 
peak; he scaled little steepnesses as they op- 
posed themselves to his course, or twisted 
around between them, delighting in every 
step of the way. 

He stopped at last at a little lair that he 
dearly loved, well around the peak of Monte 
Kosa as one rounded the northwestern 
shoulder; from this point the little-used trail 
across the ravine to the Marlborough ridge 
takes its beginning, dipping down into a 
sharp declivity and rising to the edge of the 
first little ravine beyond. Further on and 
above it, a big white stone on the lip of the 
next ravine, was a clear landmark. The 
climber dropped into his lair — one of the 
thousand little spots at the base of a slop- 
ing rock with just the right slant for the 
back; cushioned with gray rock moss, 
with blueberry bushes crowding closely. 



52 The Heart of Monadnock 

their bluish-lavender clusters begging to be 
consumed. One could stretch out here at 
lull length with head supported by clasped 
hands, looking northward into the cool blue 
light. 

The Mountain-Lover sank down into this 
dear spot with a sigh of joy. As he lay 
there, the morning sun was well behind him 
and the color-values to the north were per- 
fect. Long and deeply he gazed into the 
vivid, liquid blue of the New Hampshire sky 
with its unfathomable depths, distance be- 
hind distance. Battalions of tremendous, 
snowy masses of cloud marched across the 
southwest, stirring the pulse with their 
grandeur. Thunder-storms they betokened 
in the Catskills far to the west. Possibly 
here, later. One could not tell yet. At the 
base of the mountain to his left, over Bige- 
low Hill, the land undulated in ravishing 
lights and shadows, tier on tier, till it melted 
in faint heliotrope into distant Stratton and 
Couching Lion and Mansfield and all their 



The Heart of Monadnock 53 

sister-peaks. In its cup of green to the 
northwest lay Keene, bathed in sunshine. 

Overhead, wheeling in majestic flight, 
swam the eagle in the sapphire ocean of 
space without a stroke of his spreading 
wings — swinging high, now disappearing 
over Keene, now back again, now floating to 
the southwest. Intoxicating business! to 
float soundlessly like that in that far 
expanse! 

To the right, etched clearly against those 
depths of melting blue, looms high Monad- 
nock's mighty purple majesty. How in- 
tensely blue is the sky as seen behind it! 
It is sheer cliff from this point of vision; 
deep indigo shadows rest for a moment on 
its summit as a cloud-mass for an instant 
obscures the sun; the lower flanks are un- 
believably pink with the contrast. That 
passes; the light shifts every instant, bring- 
ing out new shapes, new recesses, new slopes. 
Infinite variety of aspects has the stately 
Giant! 



54 The Heart of Monadnock 

" 'Take what is ; trust what may be. 

"That's life's true lesson.' " 

The mind of the Mountain-Lover was 
still on the cairns, as his eyes followed the 
quiet little guides of the Marlborough- 
lavine trail, for many were visible from 
v/here he sat. He spoke the words out loud 
to the eagle which swooped nearer him. He 
could see its white head. His eyes followed 
it as it lifted itself high once more. 

Recent shattering experiences of the war, 
with all the bewilderment they brought to 
nearly everyone in their newness to human 
life; the loss of all familiar landmarks; 
the sweeping-away of former standards; the 
puzzlement of former beliefs torn from 
their roots; lives slashed straight across — it 
all made readjustment of soul and body 
necessary in the new, sharp-cornered world 
in which one found oneself. The Moun- 
tain-Lover like most others, had been hold- 
ing his mind with both hands to keep him- 
self steady, for he could not always tell 
whether it was he himself that was whirling 



The Heart of Monadnock 55 

around in this mad dance of circumstance, 
or whether it were the outside world. Or 
both. His soul ached inconceivably with 
mere bewilderment of it all — to say nothing 
of the horror induced by this savage strife. 
Somewhere, one must find strength to go 
on. Could he find it sitting at the feet of the 
Giant? He fixed his eyes yearningly on the 
calm, unshakable Titan above him with his 
garnered wisdom of the centuries. Will he 
give him of his wisdom? . . . 

No wonder, pondered the Mountain- 
I.over as often enough before, that the old- 
est similies of life and literature are those 
drawn from the heights. No wonder that 
the mightiest gods abode on Olympus . . . 
His memory lingered on the rose-flushed, 
barren, desolate, low-rolling mountains of 
Palestine as he had once seen them; ridges 
that David, poet king, had so passionately 
loved. How the intimate knowledge of 
them, etched on eye and mind and heart 
throughout those long, solitary, boyhood 
days of the princely lad, when he tended 



56 The Heart of Monadnock 

his father's flocks on remote steeps, had in- 
flamed his poetry with its intense and Orien- 
tal beauty! The "Shadow of a Mighty Rock 
in a thirsty land!" who could fully under- 
stand the simple imagery and all it meant, 
save one who had stood on treeless stretches 
under a burning sun, set in a copper sky? 
"My strong Rock, my Fortress, and my De- 
fence!" No refuge from the blazing, deadly 
light anywhere but in the indigo shadows. 
Defence and refuge for heart and soul, as 
well as for the panting body. "I will lift 
up mine eyes unto the hills from whence 
cometh my help!" Ancient words, millions 
of times repeated, yet with a new message 
to every torn human heart, in its own time 
of need. 

But this mountain-training of David, the 
shepherd lad, with its environment of con- 
stant difficulty, constant danger, enforcing 
alertness against the creeping, prowling 
things that would attack and destroy his 
helpless flocks, its training in resource of 
mind as well as in strength of body, bestow- 



The Heart of Monadnock 57 

ing readiness of eye and brain, and instant 
decision — how all these later entered into 
his passionately eager, virile life, whether as 
shepherd or musician, lover or father, pro- 
phet or priest, exile or king. The difficul- 
ties, transmuted by the strength of the hills, 
had been his stern teachers. 

Strange as it is trite, mused the Moun- 
tain-Lover, that all that is highest in un- 
spoiled man compels him to choose the hard ; 
not the flower-strewn way, but the flinty 
paths that end in a cross-crowned summit, 
summon his imperatively, even while his 
lower, ease-loving nature would pull him 
down to a life of soft places. Strange! the 
strength of the Divine in him — what else 
can it be? — that drives man away from the 
effortless plains, urging him to use the last 
ounce of human energy if need be, to gain 
the height by that sharp-edged way that 
cuts and tears the feet in their blood-marked 
trail — up and ever up. The Heights, 
crowned by a Cross draw all men unto them. 
The green pastures below are the sunny 



58 The Heart of Monadnock 

camping-places of the soul, for a night's stay 
on the march of life, to refresh the straining 
muscles, but the business of life — is the 
March. 

" 'Difficulties are God's errands.' Didn't 
Beecher used to say that?" The man 
watched a distant solitary climber, who had 
turned himself away from the rough main 
trail, in an attempt to scale up an almost 
sheer cliff. "Why does that lad attempt 
that? Well — just life! Characteristic. An 
illustration." 

But tackling those difficulties of the climb 
makes sure the muscles and trains the eye 
to take advantage of every opportunity and 
teaches the foot to respond almost before 
the conscious brain has given its command 
to take this step or to avoid that loose stone, 
till at last one moves with an ease and sure- 
ness and precision that is bewildering for 
the untried to watch. The Mountain-Lover 
recalled a sentence that he had heard Wil- 
liam James say over and over: "Into our 
instant decisions go all our past selves; 



The Heart of Monadnock 59 

every new decision gathers to itself every 
former one that was ever made." As true in 
life as on the mountain. 

He watched the distant black speck that 
was an ambitious boy slowly worm his way 
up the rock, poise himself an instant on the 
lip of a crag and wave his hands to the 
world at large in exultation at his achieve- 
ment; then he disappeared on the further 
side, to reappear a moment later silhouetted 
in triumph against the sky. 

The Mountain-Lover smiled in keen sym- 
pathy. He knew well, not only on this but 
on far greater heights the 

"Wild joy of living! the jumping from 
rock to rock, 

"The rending of boughs from the fir tree, 
the shock 

"Of the pool's living water." 

That had been the delight of his own ad- 
venturous boyhood — as it had been David's. 
Now, though his delight was different — and 
perhaps even deeper — he had those imper- 
ishable memories that had gone to the shap- 



60 The Heart of Monadnock 

ing of his life. They were woven into the 
warp of his later years and made an integral 
part of it. Without them, indeed, could he 
know his present satisfying joy? How vi- 
tally the strength of the hills had passed into 
every fibre! . . . He shut his eyes for a 
moment as the familiar consciousness of 
power began to surge slowly through him. 
Curious! this sense of limitless strength 
flowing into every cranny of his being, from 
the very soul of the Wise Old Giant into his! 
Here, alone with the sky and the clouds and 
the crags, the blue and the gray and the 
gold, the incoming tide of new power filled 
him as completely and quietly as the sea 
rises in serene pools back of sand dunes on 
the coast; protected as they are, there is no 
visible incoming of the tides; the water 
simply wells up and up till the pools are 
filled to their sedgy brims . . . 

Infinite help! infinite resource! Infinite 
because the thought and planning of eter- 
nity had gone into the shaping and the rug- 
gedness of mountain-ranges ... It might 



The Heart of Monadnock 61 

have been minutes or hours that the thinker 
lay there against the sun-warmed rock, with 
his eyes now closed, feeling new life in 
every relaxed nerve. After a time he was 
on longer thinking; he was floating out on 
a sea of peace. 



He opened his eyes slowly at last and drew 
a long breath as of one made over. So still 
had he lain that the annoyedi junco flutter- 
ing in and out of the dwarfed spruce near 
by had at last concluded he was but a long 
etone and had ceased scolding. The thinker 
whistled to the downy-breasted little crea- 
ture that cocked a startled head at him and 
flew chattering away. He stretched him- 
self and stood up, eyeing the almost unused 
trail that lay across from Monte Rosa to the 
long, gradual descent of the Marlborough 
ehoulder, that here formed his horizon line 
to the north. This trail wanders along, 
rising and falling into one little ravine after 
another: so little-used that last summer he 



62 The Heart of Monadnock 

had found thai almost every vestige of it 
had disappeared and he had cut his way 
through the tangled underbrush of the bot- 
toms where the growth was dense and had 
reblazed trees and had replaced cairns. He 
had brought today his heavy knife in its 
case, for further pruning where necessary — 
in case he decided to go across that way. It 
was one of the delights of the days to let the 
trail and the inclination of the moment call 
him. Or was it the inclination of the mo- 
ment? Or did he unconsciously follow the 
beckoning of his craggy monitor up there? 

He was never quite sure. At any rate 
^v'hen he set forth any vague intentions he 
had in mind were always ready for editing 
or for complete revision. But here he was 
— and the wild little trail beckoned. 

He dropped down the first descent marked 
by a chunk of glittering quartz. Down below 
there was a succession of little moss-covered 
steps over which the water flowed. He re 
membered a bit like that in the marvellous 
gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli. Just 



The Heart of Monadnock 63 

the same effect. He went up the opposite 
hank where grows a rare cluster of white 
pines — seldom seen at this altitude. He took 
the first high ascent and a new view showed 
itself; it was amazing how a difference in 
height of merely twenty feet, perhaps, or 
but a short distance to right or left brought 
out new aspects. The bunchberries which 
when he first arrived had been in blossom 
had now shed their petals and were already 
gathering together the red bunches of 
beauty that make every open glade glow 
with scarlet. Blueberries were ripening fast 
and were a riot of exquisite color in their 
various stages — pure pink, pinky-blue, 
misty, bloom-covered blue, hints of laven- 
der, — or almost indigo; what ravishing 
color ! Too fascinating to eat, these luscious 
little globes ! What utterly dififerent things 
they are up here revelling in the sunshine 
and warmth, from the products that appear 
in little china dishes on the supper table or 
as prosaic little black dots in culinary com- 
pounds! The climber sat down by a pecu- 



64 The Heart of Monadnock 

liarly delectable patch and ate everything 
in sight; he felt like a vandal, — but they 
were satisfving. 

The path went up and down like a wav- 
ing string, dipping into rough little ravines, 
across tangled bottoms, along which tiny 
streams usually rippled, up the opposite, 
steeply-dropping rocks, or around huge 
boulders rolled in ages past down from the 
mountain's wild sides. The trail led out at 
Is St on the western edge of a transverse bluff 
heading the wildest part of the whole great 
hollow that lies between the Marlborough 
Ridge and Monte Rosa, where far below the 
cliff on which he stood, the heavy tangle is 
practically impassible. On the little plateau 
on the top of the cliff, lie springs of crystal 
water, icy under over-hanging rocks; from 
them go dancing, scampering little rills im- 
portantly hurrying on their far way to the 
Connecticut. Here the clefts and rents in 
the mountain are jagged and deep and fre- 
quently one has to climb around the heads 



The Heart of Monadnock 65 

of many baby ravines. The explorer loved 
its roughness. 

The huge and rosy thunder-caps that had 
lain all the morning to the southwest in their 
thrilling beauty were creeping somewhat 
higher in the ineffable blue and were drift- 
ing slowly north. It was high noon, and the 
climber now threw himself down for prosaic 
luncheon purposes near the brink of the 
precipice where grew a green bit of moun- 
tain-grass against a rock, with a storm-bat- 
tered spruce cuddled close against it. By 
him lay a clear and icy little pool with a 
sandy bed — the water blue as the sky above 
and amber in the shadows. With sand- 
wiches and chocolate to consume, and nec- 
tar to drink and heart-clutching beauty all 
round — what more could even royalty de- 
sire? Contentment was in his heart. Per- 
plexities were locked up in that remote dun- 
geon where he left them when he climbed; 
when he had to take them out of durance 
later, he would have forged new weapons 
up here with which to meet them and have 



66 The Heart of Monadnock 

gained a new strength with which to con- 
tend. But that would be tomorrow. This 
was today! 



The eagle again. The strange, high, 
swooping flight as if keeping time to some 
vast organ-harmony of the universe, too 
deep for his senses to perceive. That high, 
circling flight — what was its motor power? 
Now the great bird swept nearer; it was al- 
most over Marlborough Ridge. Now it took 
a curve nearer his own head and he could 
plainly see the enormous sweep of the mo- 
tionless wings. It was so near that he sud- 
denly called to it in a great shout and on 
his word the eagle jumped! It took a swift, 
almost right-angled swoop upward. The ob- 
server had not realized that anything could 
disturb that stately flight. 



He ate and drank and was satisfied; 
drenched with content. He watched a col- 



The Heart of Monadnock 67 

ony of scrambling ants on a level bit of sand 
near him; what errands of frantic useless- 
ness, as far as a mere ignorant human ob- 
server could see! They ran hurriedly in 
every direction and got nowhere. One 
portly ant raced with desperate speed as fast 
as it could go, picked up a small log — ^in 
proportion to himself — tugged it along, 
came to a mountain of pebble, toiled and 
perspired over its top (though he could 
have gone around in one half second), 
dropped his log, forgot where he mislaid it, 
turned right about face and pelted back to 
his starting place, disappearing into a hole 
in the ground, doubtless there to discourse 
to his wife on the high speed of living. But 
all his fellows were doing the same thing. 
The observer watched them curiously. Not 
one apparently was doing anything useful. 
Amusing themselves, then, as even ants have 
a right to do, surely? Was it to them a sort 
of football game in its essence? No team- 
work if it were. What useless things they 
picked up and struggled off with! He won- 



68 The Heart of Monadnock 

dered in watching their aimless expeditions 
if it was in satire that Solomon recom- 
mended man to watch their ways and be 
wise. He knew all the stories the natural- 
ists told, of slaves and cows and other evi- 
dences of ordered prosperity, but to his un- 
trained eye everything seemed chaotic. To 
him they resembled much more the rich 
man of the Psalmist's observation who gath- 
ereth up riches — in the way of useless stub- 
ble and unusable things — and disquieteth 
himself in vain. Or was it all just the wild 
joy of living, for them as for him? 



The onward path again. Curious how the 
farther one walked the more rested one be- 
came! His way now rose gradually, lifting 
itself shelf on shelf, leading up to the water- 
shed of the Marlborough Ridge. He gained 
its crest and looked down upon the gem-like 
lake of Dublin spread in its fair beauty be- 
fore him; in this light, a deep cold green. 



The Heart of Monadnock 69 

What deep green lake did he recall vaguely 
like this one, but more intimately girt with 
close-set hills sloping to it? A lake so green, 
so intensely green, so profoundly emerald! 
where was it? Oh, Nemi! Nestled in those 
enchanting Alban hills somewhere near 
Frascati! Marvellous gem it was! every- 
thing green in that deep cup ! green sides of 
waving trees, unspeakably green water and 
with no hint in it of the sky of Italian azure 
bending over its still depths. 

He stood drinking in all the intimate 
detail of the northern foreground which he 
now faced. A broad green valley lay be- 
tween the Marlborough Ridge, on which he 
stood, and the Dublin shoulder with its trend 
to the northeast, lifting itself in bold, jutting 
peaks and sharp salients against the sky. 
His eyes followed it until it dipped at last 
in a long slant and melted into the lower 
levels where Dublin nestled at its foot. 
Straight to the north he could see Kearsarge 
and Gunstock and the Franconias and dim 
on the furthest horizon lay Mt. Washington 



70 The Heart of Monadnock 

itself. But what difference did it make what 
they were, those illusive, almost transpar- 
ent outlines? He knew them in some de- 
tail ; he was well acquainted with those tre- 
mendous ravines, such as King's Ravine and 
Tuckerman's. He knew them with their 
wide-flung rocks and gigantic boulders, tum- 
bling monsters torn from the mother-moun- 
tains, and strewn about as if the places were 
wild battle-grounds of Titans. . . He knew 
the subterranean passages beneath those 
piled-up masses with huge and fearsome 
cracks yawning across the path. He knew 
it all, and had exulted in it. . . . Never- 
theless this little mountain was the one he 
loved. 

He dropped on the lower branches of a 
spruce that carpeted the ground in its 
curious fashion, making an elastic seat, and 
gazed over the beloved details. He faced 
to the northeast, and at his right, half be- 
hind now, loomed his own Giant, with again 
a different aspect. . . He let his mind rove 
over many matters in desultory fashion. 



• The Heart of Monadnock 71 

New vistas in his plans opened before him 
in an odd way that often happened after a 
day on the heights. He saw clearly without 
effort through a dozen puzzles. Not be- 
cause he was searching consciously, but 
because the clues seemed suddenly to lie 
open to his grasp. 



He rose at last to return. He looked 
from the west to the east. 

Should he continue around the peak it- 
self and take the trail on the east side down? 
No, not today. He had a fancy to keep on 
the west side and take his way back by the 
Monte Rosa trail from the summit; this 
trail roughly paralleled the one he had 
taken coming up in the morning, but it lay 
much higher, crossing the heads of the 
various little ravines, up and down whose 
sides the lower track led. Having decided 
this, the climber came up slowly from the 
north side where he had been sitting, and 
approached the pile of stone that made the 



72 The Heart of Monadnock • 

dividing cairn where his way branched from 
the main trail. As he swung over the crest 
and faced south, he noted with surprise the 
changed aspect in that direction. Seeing 
only to the clear north and northeast as 
he had been doing the last two hours or 
so, with the wall of Monadnock lifting itself 
behind him, he had not noticed how the 
heavens to the west and south had utterly 
changed. He paused with an exclamation 
at the marvellous lights and shadows over 
the landscape. Three distinct thunder- 
storms were visible, with blue sky between 
them; over Stratton, the rain was already 
a deluge and that horizon was blotted out; 
further south he could see the little village 
of Troy, over which were already gathered 
deep indigo shadows and heavy storm clouds 
massed magnificently above. Directly 
south, over Fitzwilliam, the third storm was 
pouring out its flood and he could see the 
lightning rend the clouds. Yet Monadnock 
and all its near foreground was still em- 
braced by a strangely golden light in which 



The Heart of Monadnock 73 

every minutest object was miraculously 
clear in entrancing contrast with the angry 
purples of the advancing storms which 
were surging from the far background. 

The three summer tempests were racing 
for Monadnock, always a storm-lure. The 
observer cast an experienced eye at the wild 
contestants in the mad race and then he con- 
sidered his own downward path. Impos- 
sible to reach shelter. The storm would be 
on him in— say ten minutes. In any event 
he infinitely preferred the open rocks to 
the woods. He went down on the Monte 
Rosa trail for perhaps an hundred feet or 
so and chose for his reserved seat in the 
spectacle a great mass of rock that faced 
southwest, and the other side of which by 
an acute angle faced east so that when the 
storm broke he could find on that «ide 
some shelter from the cutting west wind 
that brought the rain. What the force of 
that wind could be, he knew quite well. 

He pulled his soft hat well over on his 
head and sat down on a little natural seat 



74 The Heart of Monadnock 

of stone at the base of his rock, and awaited 
the oncoming storms. He watched their 
courses appraisingly. 

"I bet on the Stratton one," he said. "I 
give it five minutes." 

The strange light grew more and more 
eerie. Sunshine overhead for the sun still 
rode in the last unclouded bit of blue. The 
atmosphere became more deeply, malevo- 
lently purple. The whole sweep of the 
horizon was now lost in the blurring tor- 
rents of rain that came marching forward, 
with their vans still distinctly marked. 
The side of each storm was cut as if with 
a sharp knife. The immediate foreground 
still caught and flung defiantly the sunshine 
against the encroaching violet. The air was 
deathly quiet with the hushed, affrighted 
silence of nature in the face of a storm; 
every small winged thing had vanished ; not 
even a blade of mountain grass so much as 
stirred. Then suddenly up from the gorge 
north of Monte Rosa a slight motion just 
agitated the forest leaves which had been 



The Heart of Monadnock 75 

presenting white, frightened under-surfaces 
to the sky. Involuntarily the spectator 
held his breath. For a moment there 
seemed to be nothing to breathe. 

He looked eagerly from the direction of 
Stratton, southward; little Troy now en- 
gulfed in the rain, was as if it did not exist. 
Gap Mountain was hidden. The rushing 
clouds at last caught the sunlight from over- 
head and instantly dun gray settled over all 
the world; nearer and nearer with a last 
devouring dash came the march of the rain 
from the direct west. He could see the down- 
pour, still with a clean edge, come on like 
a consuming monster, swallowing every- 
thing in its path. The thunder was now 
continuous, muttering, rattling. A deep 
convulsive sigh came up the gorge as if Na- 
ture cried, "At last!" Now came the curious 
slight scampering patter of the advance 
guard of drops on the quivering mat of 
leaves far below; a strange icy gust of wind 
cleft its way to the peak; a deluging rush up 
the rocky sides — and the storm was upon 



76 The Heart of Monadnock 

him. Stratton had beaten, but Troy and 
Fitzwilliam were barely a second behind. 
The world was blotted out. 

The spectator crept quickly to the left 
side of his sheltering rock where the icy 
wind was somewhat tempered. In one half 
moment he was drenched to the skin, and 
he would have been wet to the bones, he 
reflected, if skin were not waterproof. He 
was now enveloped in a world of rain and 
cloud so dense that he could not see three 
inches beyond his face. The artilleries of 
the rival storms, now united at the peak, 
were incessant. Flash! crash! bang! Flash! 
crack! BANG! fireworks on a celestial scale 
darted and coruscated, and tore apart the 
clouds like golden rivers. The rain was 
not in drops but in curtains. In another 
two minutes torrents of water were boiling 
down the rocks in cataracts ; what had been 
a tiny rivulet beyond him, was incredibly a 
foot deep. The climber got up on the next 
shelf to keep his feet out of the icy pool 



The Heart of Monadnock 77 

that surged around them. Innumerable 
needles of rain smote his face and blinded 
his eyes. 

Flash! crack! BANG! came the great 
guns above. Blinding glare would show a 
sky of rent, fierce, tumultuous clouds in 
layer after layer. If only he could more 
easily keep his rain-blinded eyes open, to 
see those incredible effects of the cloud- 
masses when the lightning tore them apart! 
Such marvels of shapes and depths and un- 
earthly colors in them! And also such tre- 
mendous gradations of sound in the rolling 
thunder as it reverberated from every side 
at once, now near, now far, crashing against 
the cliffs above, and tumbling its gigantic 
echoes back on his own head. Mad revelry 
of the storm-gods! Bang! BANG! Bang! 
BANG! 

Minutes passed. The storm-gods paused 
to breathe. The fascinated spectator got his 
own breath. Then it was all on again, rain 
and blast and pyrotechnics and water 
spouts. Another pause. A longer one. An- 



78 The Heart of Monadnock 

other onslaught. The spectator knew that 
now the force of the wild sunmier-tempest 
was broken. Minutes passed again. . . 
No longer were the flashes and crashes sim- 
ultaneous. Sullenly the storms withdrew in 
a solid phalanx on their way to the Atlantic, 
but the clouds still hung heavily around the 
summit and stretched down the sides. A 
glimmery effect as of phosphorescence shone 
through the clinging mist and he knew that 
beyond to the west the sun was again shin- 
ing in clean-washed blue, though he could 
see nothing but vague and towering shapes 
of cliffs close to him. A few last spattering 
drops of rain were now and then squeezed 
out of the thinning clouds — but the storm 
was over. And it was only twenty minutes 
since he had topped the crest. The speed of 
these mountain storms is incredible! 

The Mountain-Lover, in breathless and 
very wet delight stepped down into the pool 
at the base of the rock. It was nearly up to 
his knees. He pulled off his hat and 



The Heart of Monadnock 79 

squeezed it as dry as possible, and took off 
his sweater to wring out what water he 
could get rid of. He stepped forward a 
little, waiting for the mist to lift somewhat, 
for it was impossible to get much sense of 
direction while it was still thick. But he 
watched with rapture the fairy scene when 
this happened; it was like being shut into 
a tiny, pearly gray theatre with diaphanous 
draperies flirting their drifting, gauzy folds 
mischievously all about, lifting them now 
here, now there, in tantalizing fashion, 
showing distracting glimpses of elfin beauty. 
... Or it was like swarms of trooping 
Oreads dancing from point to point, now 
flinging long veils of opalescent gauziness 
gaily across his very eyes, now whirling 
back in impish laughter, while glimmering 
sunlight filtered down from the blue be- 
yond. . . . The cloudy nymphs were hav- 
ing a mad frolic around the head of old 
Monadnock today. But slowly the sunlight 
routed the misty, pearly revellers. Wider 



80 The Heart of Monadnock 

became the circle of vision minute by min- 
ute. Muffled laughter floated back as if 
they called, "We go — but we come again!" 
Now what had seemed like a huge spruce 
on some distant rock, showed as the mist 
lifted, to be a little ragged tree on a near- 
by rock. Now the mist settled again in a 
soft white blanket blurring out the world 
in a trice. Then it was swept away by a 
gust of fresh breeze. Clearer spaces thus 
came and went. Then only soft wraiths of 
fluffy white remained, creeping from tiny 
spruce to tiny spruce and clinging lovingly 
in their branches. Now he could see dis- 
tinctly down the crags, but he made his 
way along slowly on account of the pools 
and baby torrents through which he went. 
They filled every cleft and every hollow. 
The mountain was overflowing with lovely 
sparkling water, gay with its sojourn above 
in the clouds. The water-music was every- 
where, gurgling, bubbling, chattering, sing- 
ing, shouting, as the myriad drops tried to 
tell the rocks what they had seen in their 



The Heart of Monadnock 81 

recent skimming in the upper blue. A lim- 
pid orchestra. 

Now Cranberry Crag detached itself as 
the walker approached it, with its pictur- 
esque Japanesey little trees on its romantic 
little height. Up this he went and then 
down on the hither side, but he descended 
it on his back as his feet slipped in the sop- 
ping, treacherous moss and mountain grass. 
On and on down; he reached the high 
swampy spot where the cotton-grass grows — 
now a veritable little lake. He skirted its 
rippling surface. He turned to his left and 
presently passed Lot's Wife, shiny and 
sparkling from her recent bath. A little 
further and he was at tree-line, and he 
passed under the swaying, dripping 
branches from which every baby-breeze 
sent showers of drops teasingly all over him. 
But what a storm! How glorious it had 
been! The magnificent lordly crash of the 
thunder yet rang reverb eratingly in his ears. 
What a storm! And he was of it! 



82 The Heart of Monadnock 

"How awful to have been out in all that 
frightful storm!" commiseratingly remarked 
the old lady from Waterford that evening 
at supper. "Couldn't you even get into the 
woods?" 

"Well, no," returned the climber, depre- 
catingly. He knew they all thought him a 
little queer. "You see, I felt safer in the 
open." 




ALONG THE SIDE-FOOT PATH 



The Heart of Monadnock 83 



This morning the Mountain-Lover had 
work to do, for proofs must be read, cor- 
rected, and sent off in the noon mail. It 
was not till after midday dinner, therefore, 
that he could take his joyous way aloft. 

Which way to day of a hundred allure- 
ments? He had rather thought of the entic- 
ing Parker trail leading from the main road 
below the house, for he dearly loved those 
crisp pastures with their roughly jutting 
rocks and intimate details; but after sitting 
still all the morning — at real work, he re- 
marked to himself — his muscles clamored 
for use. He wandered up the Sidef oot, con- 
sequently, to take any offshoot of it that 
called him. The call came from the steep 
and slippery Hedgehog path where it leaves 



84 The Heart of Monadnock 

the Sidef oot, up through high woods with its 
carpet of thick, brown needles, sun-freckled 
and appealing. The climber rarely took this 
path on his upland way, for it was much 
more alluring to strike into it far above 
when his face was turned homeward and 
race down it with great six-foot leaps; there 
is little underbrush hereabouts; maples, 
with their leaves of golden green as one 
looks up through them, and the huge 
spruces of the lower slants, use this as com- 
mon ground. However — something seemed 
to beckon him this way and he swung up 
the steep ascent slowly, for the path was al- 
ways slippery with its dry and shiny carpet. 
He had gone well beyond the Link-path 
and was bearing to his left, when he heard 
racing steps above him; looking up the path 
he saw someone leaping down as he himself 
loved to do, slipping on the glassy needles, 
catching young saplings as he came and 
swinging himself around them with great 
downward bounds. A most exhilarating 
method of descent! As the runner drew 



The Heart of Monadnock 85 

close tlie climber saw him catch at a young 
sapling that was quite dead and he called out 
quickly not to trust it — but not quickly 
enough. The runner caught it, and as he 
swung around on it, it snapped under his 
weight and the rash one came rolling down- 
wards headlong into a needle-cushioned hol- 
low. 

The climber sprang to his aid, but the 
runner rolled over and sat up dazed but un- 
hurt, but ruefully rubbing his head. He 
stared up and the climber stared down. 

"Young man," admonished the climber, 
seeing the other had hurt nothing but his 
feelings, "if that had happened ten feet 
further up, you would have had a nasty fall 
on that ledge above you and a broken head 
might have been your lot. It is all right to 
run down and great fun — but if you do, you 
will have to look critically at anything you 
catch hold of; if you swing in that rash 
fashion on dead saplings or dead branches 
you'll easily break your neck. Don't you 
know that?" 



86 The Heart of Monadnock 

The runner, a vigorous, sunny-faced lad 
of seventeen or so, grinned engagingly as he 
still rubbed the back of his head. 

''Got a bump like a pumpkin as it is! But 
I didn't have time to look and see! Please 
tell a fellow how you manage that when you 
are coming down lickettysplit?" He sucked 
his slightly bleeding palm as he discovered 
that the broken wood had torn it. 

"You just see,'' began the climber, sud- 
denly realizing how entirely it was a matter 
of long and almost unconscious training of 
eye to do this; how subconsciously one 
would take in every aspect around; how he 
himself would note without awareness, no 
matter how fast he chanced to be coming 
down, whether a branch or sapling to which 
he trusted his weight was sound; how his 
foot avoided, as if of its own volition, a 
loose-looking stone. That habit of the swift, 
appraising glance, no matter how intent his 
mind was on other things, had long ago be- 
come second nature — or as the Duke of Wei- 



The Heart of Monadnock 87 

lington said, "That habit which is ten times 
nature." 

The climber laughed down at the sunny- 
faced lad. 

"Not used to the woods, are you?" 

"Not much. Seashore, mostly. Like to 
sail. But I'd like this too. We came last 
evening. My father used to come here, but 
I never came before. He took me up on the 
Pulpit Rock trail and then we tumbled into 
a path which was all broken rocks right 
under it — Hedgehog — he called it. Then 
back there when I saw this bully long 
stretch through the woods, I sprinted. But," 
returning to the point, as he sprang up, 
"how in thunder do you see dead wood 
when you're running, before you grab it?" 

"That's part of wood-lore. Disciplined 
eyesight, I suppose," returned the Moun- 
tain-Lover. "At any rate, if you climb 
much, you'll cultivate it. You'll get bad 
falls if you don't! Or else don't try stunts. 
Let your eye be quicker than your hand — 
that's all. Sure you're not hurt? Is that 



88 The Heart of Monadnock 

your father coming?" He smiled and nod- 
ded at the well-knit boy who waved his 
hand first at the approaching figure, then at 
himself, and then dashed off down the steep- 
est part of the path with unabated zeal. 
The climber watched him with interest as 
he took a flying leap, slipped, and then slid 
down fifteen feet or so on his back. The 
observer waited for a moment to speak to 
the father as he drew near. 

"Loose stone," he commented, as they 
both watched the boy pick himself up again. 
"Not hurt, though. Oh, well! he'Ulearn." 

The climber took his own leisurely way 
upwards again as they parted. He left the 
Hedgehog trail where the little emerald rug 
of the Green Carpet trail spreads itself un- 
der the ice-worn heights of the great ridge 
above him, and went across its green de- 
lights. His thoughts were on the boy and 
the broken branch. 

"What mishaps of life come through lack 
of this seeing eye!" he mused. "Having 
eyes they see not and hearing they do not 



The Heart of Monadnock 89 

understand! Unproven statements camou- 
flage as sense. Unchallenged assertions 
carry specious conviction with them. Un- 
tried advisers are accepted at their own val- 
uation. They look sound — but a close in- 
spection would show the rottenness." 

He came slowly up the short, steep bluff 
that shuts off the Green Carpet dell to the 
north, turning again to his right to strike 
into the Pulpit Rock trail toward the Four 
Spots, meaning to wander on towards In- 
spiration Rock. As he came out into the 
open above tree-line, he dropped down for 
a moment on a rock overlooking the seren- 
ity of the Peterboro' Hills. He paused to 
eat blueberries. The route of everybody is 
punctuated by blueberries but they never 
interrupt one's meditations with their gus- 
tatory appeal. The thoughts of the climber 
meandered on disjointedly. 

"How often men say in some misadven- 
ture, 'I trusted to so and so for I supposed he 
knew.' Why did they suppose so without 
testing? One good look might have told 



90 The Heart of Monadnock 

anyone so! How many important opera- 
tions have I seen go to smash because a crit- 
ical detail was entrusted to some one who 
was really rotten at the core, and no one had 
looked closely enough to see? That invest- 
ment of mine last winter. Served me right! 
Looked sound — good returns, apparently — 
but I should have investigated myself and 
then I would have seen the conditions were 
not as represented ; only true on the surface. 
I should have given that suspicious weak 
spot in the affair attention enough to know 
it was really rottenness — when I thought it 
an unimportant detail! Yes, served me 
right. One thought of this law of the trail 
would have saved me. Rotten branches in- 
deed! Why should I do in life among im- 
portant crises what I should not dream of 
doing up on the mountain? Loose stones! 
Decayed wood! Dead branches! And un- 
seeing eyes!" 

He had come out beyond the Coffee Pot 
Camp and the calm stretch of the mountain 
was before him. He looked up musingly at 



The Heart of Monadnock 91 

broad reaches of cliff and bluff and preci- 
pice above the green, ribbon-like cleft 
through which the Paradise Valley way 
takes its shadowy length. The afternoon 
sun lay full on the soft, mellow, brownish- 
gray of the lichened rocks, bringing out ev- 
ery rent and cranny. High in the heavens 
floated banners of fleecy white foam that 
might be playthings of the angels, set 
astream by them, drifting long pennons 
from some point in the southwest. A west 
wind blew lightly laden with spicy sweet- 
ness. A rare mountain goldfinch made its 
swooping flight near him. On the breath of 
the breeze came down from the watching 
heights, etched against the profound north- 
ern blue, a voice that whispered half mock- 
ingly, 

"Listen and learn, oh, deaf mortal!" 



The Mountain-Lover had had with him 
for a few days a friend who was new to the 
mountain. They had once done some ice 



92 The Heart of Monadnock 

climbing in the Alps together, where the ap- 
peal had been to the physical and the emo- 
tional, and both delighted in the contrast 
here where the mental, the ethical and the 
aesthetic overrode the purely physical. Mon- 
adnock can never be called strenuous. That 
is why one has time to think. . . 

The two had taken with keen pleasure 
all the loved trails and outlooks. They had 
followed the Upper trail to the Great Pas- 
ture, along the west side the Monte Rosa, 
down through the woods, coming back by 
way of the Cart path and the Twisted Birch. 
They had dropped down under the Matter- 
horn and had looked up at craggy Point 
Surprise towering above them. They had 
gone far out on the Dublin Ridge past the 
Sarcophagus, following the waving path as 
it meanders up and down the peaks on that 
long, stern shoulder, to where the path 
drops down into the woods, leading to the 
little village by its green lake. They had 
gone over the Jaffrey shoulder and taken 
the old White Spot trail down far below, 



The Heart of Monadnock 93 

crossing over to the Ark trail and coming up 
that way. They had visited the Tufted 
Spruce and explored the many twisting 
trails on both sides of Mossy Brook, and 
they had gone down into Dingle Dell and 
swarmed up Inspiration Rock. 

The friend had gone on his way, and the 
Mountain-Lover was alone again. One rea- 
son why he so constantly wandered off by 
himself was that most people in starting out 
very naturally wanted to get to some partic- 
ular point— and the Mountain-Lover never 
cared whether he arrived or not. He liked 
best to set off with some destination only 
vaguely in his mind, and he loved to be free 
to change it as the fancy took him. Perhaps 
more often than not he found himself ful- 
filling the first half-formed intention, but 
he preferred to be untrammelled by the 
usual masculine desire to do a thing — of no 
particular importance, it might be — simply 
because one has announced that object. He 
was not without sympathy and understand- 
ing of those who liked to pursue a definite 



94 The Heart of Monadnock 

plan — and he was quite willing they should 
have that pleasure ; only, not with him. 

"With previous intentions I have nothing 
whatever to do," he liked to say largely to 
himself when he suddenly swerved from his 
first plan if some unexpected enticement of- 
fered itself. This was his playtime. 

He hetook himself to the Monte Rosa trail 
this morning, loitering along until he should 
hear the call of some special path. The way 
above the spring was this morning edged 
with the strange lapis-lazuli blue of Clin- 
tonia berries with their dull richness of 
color. He took the trail to the Tooth when 
he came to the branching of the paths. Ev- 
ery path was so intensely characteristic ! K 
he had been dropped on any of them blind- 
folded he thought he could tell almost unerr- 
ingly when he opened his eyes, just where 
he was. To newcomers or to casual observ- 
ers, it might be that all paths looked alike; 
narrow, almost imperceptible tracks, wind- 
ing among trees, jutting rocks on one side or 
the other, moss, Clintonia berries or bunch- 



The Heart of Monadnock 95 

berries everywhere, little ascents and drops 
of tlie path, moss and maples, spruces and 
blueberries all around. But to say, never- 
theless, that they were all alike was to say 
that the human race is all alike because all 
men have two eyes, a nose and a mouth. 
There are people who say that all Chinese 
look alike to them ; or all negroes. Also, all 
mountain paths. 

As usual the deciduous trees swiftly gave 
way to the hardy spruces which defy the up- 
land winds even though tortured and twisted 
and stunted by them. Trees only five feet 
high, up here often have a diameter of seven 
or eight inches; their lowest boughs may 
carpet the ground for a distance of ten feet 
in the direction away from the prevailing 
knife-blade winds of the winter, making an 
elastic bed on which one may lie. Always 
the trees are one sided, throwing out their 
defiant, blunted green pennons away from 
the wind. Courageous little warriors ! Bat- 
tered out of shape, thwarted in every design 
of symmetry, balked in their ambitions, 



96 The Heart of Monadnock 

plundered of their hopes, frustrated in their 
growth, valiantly they stand their ground; 
undismayed they lift their bold little green 
heads. Always close to them creep the wel- 
tering blueberries, decorating themselves 
with their tiny globes of lusciousness, ex- 
quisite bloom on the pinky-blueness. 

The Mountain-Lover came out of the last 
little cleft between these indomitable little 
green soldiers, and approached the huge, 
jutting Tooth which slants from its base 
with deep shadow beneath. A sheer sweep 
of bed-rock here. Under the Tooth the 
climber sat himself down to take in at his 
leisure the wide-rolling and lovely view to 
the south with Gap mountain in the fore- 
ground. Its slippery, grassy double top 
caught the sunlight; its sides were melting 
yellows and greens. From the distance, the 
eyes of the observer turned to the lichen- 
growths near him, with their spreading map- 
like decorations ; what colors were hidden in 
their crumpled folds! stains of yellow, of 
brown, scarlet, gray and green. Strange, 



The Heart of Monadnock 97 

subtle harmonies which one must look 
closely to observe, for at the first glance 
they look dun-brown. Only those that have 
eyes may see. 

The loiterer rose and glancing around, 
slowly headed his way towards the Black 
Precipice and the Amphitheatre trail. . . In 
one of the little hollows he saw ahead of 
him what looked like a moving bunch of 
brownish leaves. It was a porcupine, wad- 
dling unconcernedly along with its whitish- 
brown quills folded down peaceably. The 
observer had never seen one so far up here 
before and he followed its ungainly course 
for a little distance with much interest, till 
quite undisturbed by his proximity it fin- 
ished its daily exercise and retired to its 
rock fastness. Two or three quills lay on 
the ground near and the observer lifted 
them with an interest that was always fresh. 
What marvellous things were these hollow 
quills with their points of needle fineness! 



98 The Heart of Monadnock 

On over the Black precipice. Then along 
the rocks to the top of the Staircase ; slowly 
across the little dip in the shoulder, to the 
Four Spots, with a vague eye on the upper 
ledges. Now he was looking northeast. He 
pulled off his cap, letting the north wind lift 
his hair. Today low strata of opalescent 
clouds lay banking the horizon and the soft- 
est fairy haze lightly veiled the landscape, 
giving it a spiritual and unsubstantial 
beauty like a dream-country. The world 
looked transparent. In the low-lying clouds 
were all the tints of mother-of-pearl and the 
sky above was of blurred English blue, not 
glory-giving Italian azure. It was a land- 
scape in which the Mountain-Lover partic- 
ularly delighted — though he smiled as he 
thought the words, since whatever aspect 
offered itself, he was apt to think it was one 
which especially charmed him. 

Up above, in the last stretch of the Red 
Cross trail, nearly under the peak, a scarlet- 
sweatered climber made a vivid blotch of 
color. Below fell the Dingle Dell trail with 







^> 



^^*^, 



»JL '" ^ 






UNDER THE BLACK PRECIPICE 



The Heart of Monadnock 99 

its marking-stone of white quartz. He was 
just turning to the north, when he heard a 
clamoring voice hailing him from behind, 
and as he looked down the Dingle Dell trail 
in the direction from which the hail came, 
he saw some one — a very puffy and dishev- 
eled some one — who called to him in no un- 
certain terms. This one announced at the 
top of his lungs, as he toiled upwards, that 
he was lost. He summoned the wayfarer 
above him to stop and tell him where he 
was. He made parenthetical and emphatic 
comments on so-called paths that did not 
exist — as far as he was concerned. He im- 
plied that they were unworthy of any dic- 
tionary interpretation of the name. 

The climber waited sympathetically. The 
toiler mounted, still puffily ejaculating, till 
he gained the rise where the other stood at 
attention, and gasped out further explana- 
tions. 

He had arrived last evening, late. He 
had never been here before, but he had 
often seen the mountain from a distance and 



100 The Heart of Monadnock 

knew it for a small one. He had intended 
to climb it this morning, and then after din- 
ner to take the Lost Farm trail to the Ark. 
Come back by automobile and the next day 
do all the rest of the trails. The listener 
smiled but said nothing. The newcomer ob- 
served he wished to do it all up at once as 
he could not stay long. He had inquired 
this morning of several people at the house, 
and they told him the Paradise Valley trail 
up to the top was the best; not so steep. He 
had obtained a map. He had set out, per 
instructions, on that — what did they call it? 
Side Foot? — Well, he walked on the sides 
of his feet all the way up. He was to come 
out at the top of the Staircase. Oh, yes, it 
looked all plain on the map. Then he was 
to take some way over the rocks and come 
into the Paradise Valley and go up that path 
and strike the summit quite easily. He had 
seen a picture of the Main trail called the 
Last Arrow. It was surely steep and this, 
they said, was better. So he tried the Side- 
foot, and came out at last on the top of some 



The Heart of Monadnock 101 

rocks. Didn't see any Staircase — unless it 
was all Staircase. He couldn't see anything 
but high rocks. Map useless. Didn't look 
anything like it should. Nothing that looked 
like a Valley, much less like Paradise. Well, 
he browsed around a little, and saw those 
stones that they told him marked a way. 
Cairns? Thank you. So he followed them, 
hoping to find a Valley that led up, though 
he had always supposed that valleys led 
down. Ever climbed mountains before? 
No. NEVER. This was the first ; likely to be 
a very emphatic last. He liked good level 
seashore where one could see where one was 
going. Asbury Park for him. But — well — 
he kept going after those little stones. Oh, 
yes, he could see them all right. He wasn't 
blind. But the blamed things kept on go- 
ing down; it was into a valley all right, only 
he wasn't going where he wanted to get — 
on top. First he thought it might twist 
around somehow. At last he concluded to 
turn around and try some other way — but 
he didn't realize how far down he had gone. 



102 The Heart of Monadnock 

Then in turning he had somehow mislaid 
that emphatically inconspicuous path — 
which still did not consort with dictionary 
definitions — and he found he had lost cairns 
and directions into the bargain. He had 
therefore been stumbling around down 
there, until he had at last broken through 
into the open — and then, thank Heaven! he 
had seen some one he could ask. 

Having thus delivered himself he ran 
down, panting. His narrative had been shot 
out, not perhaps in one breath, but in a 
staccato succession of breaths ; he stumbled 
into a few periods, but they were clearly 
rhetorical only, and not intended for full 
stops. The state of his trim brown business 
suit — for he was dressed as if for Tremont 
Street — the scratches on his shining tan 
shoes — for traces of high polish still lin- 
gered amid abrasions — his scratched but 
well-cared-for hands, his hat pushed back 
from a rubicund, reeking countenance, 
which, in spite of his difficulties, showed, 
the observer was interested to note, an in- 



The Heart of Monadnock 103 

eradicable good humor — all testified to the 
truth of his panting Odyssey. 

The Mountain-Lover took up the refrain, 
all sympathy. Yes, it was hard at times to 
find one's way on the paths, especially when 
they crossed; no, perhaps they were not very 
plain to a stranger. The trail he should 
have taken led up around that little preci- 
pice that he had faced when he first came 
out into the open. He could follow the lit- 
tle cairns back across the rocks in this dip, 
and he would easily find the Sidefoot again 
and thence down to the house. 

But the lost one, perspiring but un- 
daunted, scoffed. He avowed his undimin- 
ished determination to get up that old Peak 
if he burst in the attempt. That was his 
unswerving determination. He would pos- 
sibly resign his intentions as to the Ark Trail 
for the afternoon, but for him it was Pike's 
Peak or perish. The Mountain-Lover 
greatly admired his pluck and in accord- 
ance with this admiration he found himself 
offering to go back and plant the feet of this 



104 The Heart of Monadnock 

energetic explorer firmly m the trail of Par- 
adise Valley, the charming high green cleft 
that runs close to the east slope of the sum- 
mit. Gratefully the other accepted the offer 
of guidance and when they turned, he made 
his uncertain way behind, his feet slipping 
now and then on the weather-worn rocky 
slants; he even sat down unexpectedly once, 
with some emphasis. . . They came to the 
divide, where he had first mislaid his path, 
and his guide showed him where he had 
made his mistake. Then as they stood on 
the little watershed where they could now 
see both east and west his guide indicated 
the view, but with no comment. The Lost 
One guardedly admired it as being "exten- 
sive," and wished to know the name of 
every respectable eminence in sight, but he 
plainly kept his previous opinion as to the 
paths, which he apparently thought should 
be macadamized. Still he showed a certain 
open-mindedness when he remarked, after 
glancing appraisingly at the knickerbockers, 
golf stockings, and rubbersoled shoes of his 




■^ 

O " 
H til 






X 



The Heart of Monadnock 105 

guide and then at his own Tremont Street 
array, that he could plainly see there would 
be somewhat greater interest in the climb, 
for him, if he could plump his feet down 
like that on the rocks. For himself, he 
wasn't walking; he was stepping. 

"But it's some view," he suddenly con- 
cluded. 

Then he scanned with interest the im- 
mediate spot on which they stood and com- 
pared the directions which the guide indi- 
cated, with his map. Oh, yes, he had seen 
those little stones up there, but he didn't 
think there was sense in them. It looked as 
if he couldn't get around up there, and so 
he didn't try them. Seemed to him that the 
way he had taken was more sense. No, he 
hadn't exactly lost his way here, so much as 
taken the wrong one. Down there in the 
Dinky Dell trail he had lost his way if you 
like, for he had turned around just a few 
times and suddenly the path had walked off. 
The Mountain-Lover smiled. Then some- 
thing in the confiding aspect of his new 



106 The Heart of Monadnock 

friend made him to his own surprise sud- 
denly break his own fixed principle of never 
giving advice — a principle wrung out of 
many past experiences — and proffer a sug- 
gestion for the future, apropos of being lost, 
in the remote chance that the newcomer 
might be tempted on a future mountain ex- 
ploration. 

"You might find this suggestion useful," 
he therefore offered; "as soon as you find 
you are lost, remember that then the path 
cannot be far away, for you could not go a 
dozen feet without knowing you have 
strayed from it. Just here is the trouble, 
for most people at this point begin to hunt 
around frantically and almost immediately 
they lose all sense of direction. The woods 
to the casual observer look much alike on 
all sides and in a moment you are not sure 
from what direction you came. So here is 
the point; the moment you realize you are 
lost, tie your handkerchief to a high bough 
to give you a center, or a landmark; remem- 
ber your path is still close at hand some- 



The Heart of Monadnock 107 

where. Now circle around your handker- 
chief, first in small circles, then in larger 
ones, peering carefully to right and left, for 
these narrow trails can scarcely be seen ex- 
cept lengthwise. You must look directly 
into them to find them, generally. You 
have your landmark handkerchief to keep 
you from wandering away from the spot, 
you see. Now there, within a circumference 
probably of twenty feet and almost certainly 
within fifty, will be your path. You can 
usually find it within five minutes, and yet 
from lack of this simple bit of knowledge, 
many a man has been hopelessly lost." 

The lost-and-found-one listened with ab- 
sorbed attention, still mopping at intervals 
his moist and beaming countenance. 

"Holy Peter!" he exclaimed, after a mo- 
ment of ruminating silence. "Sounds sim- 
ple. Stop in your tracks the moment you 
know you are lost. Make a landmark. Find 
your path and get back. Don't get lost any 
more than you are." 



108 The Heart of Monadnock 

His guide was lost in admiration at his 
quick, businesslike way of grasping and 
phrasing the suggestion. 

"Ever been lost yourself? Tried it?" pur- 
sued the other. 

"Yes. Not here. Adirondacks. Would 
have been pretty serious but for my remem- 
brance of this bit of woodcraft. I learned 
it from Stewart White." 

"White? Stewart? Boston? I don't 
know him," returned the lost-and-f ound-one 
briefly. He leaned against the rock and 
seemed to be chewing and digesting the idea 
which had just been presented to him, find- 
ing in it unsuspected papulum. There came 
a little intent scowl on his rubicund but no 
longer dripping brow as he explored the 
unwonted track of metaphor in his practi- 
cal mind. 

"I like that." He took up the cud of the 
advice and set his teeth in it again. "I like 
that idea. It has sense because you can get 
lost in more places than the woods." He 
spoke with staccato pauses of reflection. 



The Heart of Monadnock 109 

"You get off the track in life pretty easy. 
And gettin' back is the very Old Boy. Just 
kind of do the wrong trick just for once, 
you think, and by jinks, you may get in the 
brambles for keeps! Business men know!" 

The Mountain-Lover waited with wonder- 
struck interest. If a fat rabbit from the 
bushes had hopped out and sat up and given 
him instructions in mathematics he could 
hardly have been more astonished than at 
this unlooked-for application. He glanced 
up at the Wise Old Titan bending his be- 
nignant face over them; who would have 
dreamed that in this plump and prosperous 
merchant there would have been a listener? 

The speaker went on, striking his short 
forefinger in the palm of his other hand for 
emphasis. His quick business imagination 
— for he surely had that variety, if no other 
— sifted its own grist from the hopper. 

"Tell you what I thought of, quick as you 
said that," he went on in breathless earnest- 
ness. "In our business — I'm jewellery, near 
Providence — have a biggish store — there's 



110 The Heart of Monadnock 

a young feller I been sorter interested in. 
Good, promisin' chap. We find it pays to 
sorter keep an eye on the young fellers out- 
side business — find out what they do — 
where they spend their evenings; all that. 
I'd liked this one. Well, some time ago, I be- 
gan to suspect something was wrong; he was 
spending too freely for his salary — see? I 
suspected he was playin' high perhaps. 
Found out he was. Boy didn't even know 
he was off the track, you see! Beginner's 
luck. I watched him a little because I didn't 
want him to go wrong — but it's mighty easy 
to go wrong — just kinder step aside, and 
there you are. Just like you said. Next 
thing, he was mighty glum. Losin', I 
thought. He's got a good business head on 
him, and I didn't want him to go wrong. I 
kep' my eye on him for weeks — couldn't 
really find anything wrong but kinder 
sensed it. Then — I began to suspect some 
monkeyin' with the books and I found out 
his wife — she's a pretty, young thing — was 
ill and had to have an operation. Then — 



The Heart of Monadnock 111 

things happened — ain't necessary to go into 
that — but he was frightened to death, and 
ivay off. I kep' my eye opened wider and I 
was sure he was lost — just as you said. Was 
just runnin' round and round and gettin' 
worse off every moment. Just like you said. 
Couldn't find his way back and it was pretty 
brambly." 

The speaker stopped to disentangle him- 
self. His guide listened in absorbed inter- 
est to the jerky narrative. 

"Just here I found something to put my 
hand on. No one else knew. My partner 
was sick for a long time, so that was easy. 
Got on to it good and sure. Had him up be- 
fore me. I been a boy myself and I know 
how it is — mighty easy! Mighty easy!" 
The kindly face began to look radiant to 
the absorbed listener. Utterly unegotistical 
in this aspect, the talker was merely inter- 
ested in following out haltingly the applica- 
tion he had oddly enough detected. 

"Well, in another week he'd have gotten 
where I couldn't have saved him. He'd of 



112 The Heart of Monadnock 

been over the edge for sure! He'd gotten 
off the path first in that gamblin' business. 
Was lately married and it was more expen- 
sive business than he thought. She was a 
good little thing, but inexperienced. What 
could you expect? Made money first. Easy 
money. Then, of course, he began to lose. 
Old story. Couldn't get out of the tangle, as 
I said. Handled firm's money — was a good 
bookkeeper — easy for him to juggle things a 
bit. Yet strange to say, he wasn't prison- 
fodder — not a bit of it. Just nothin' but 
lost. Frightened to death. Then the little 
wife. He adored her and she got appendi- 
citis, and it all got worse. Had to have 
money — and he played again, hopin' to win. 
You can guess! See?" 

The listener nodded, watching him in- 
tently. 

"Mighty nice lad!" reminiscently. "Well, 
I had him in my office — and — well — it all 
came out. Kinder sullen, at first. Kinder 
bitter." The fat, red face grew more eager 
till it fairly shone^ but he did not dwell on 



The Heart of Monadnock 113 

the kindliness of an understanding attitude 
that changed the sullenness and bitterness. 
Probably he did not think of it. Happened 
so, he would doubtless have said. 

"Well, sir, we thrashed that all out. He 
saw where he got off wrong. Gamblin' — at 
first just for fun. And all the rest followed. 
I talked to him like a Dutch Uncle. We set- 
tled it all and got him back on the right 
path. He is to pay it all back little by little, 
and of course we saw his wife through. 
'Twasn't fair that she should suffer because 
he got off the path. But he is on again now, 
and workin' like a horse. He won't lose the 
track again, not on your life. . . I see it 
all. He'd orter have made a landmark of 
his real honesty when he first got off and 
tied to it and circled around it till he found 
the path." The speaker again dried a per- 
spiring brow, confused in his efforts to ex- 
press unaccustomed metaphor. His mind 
was scaling unwonted heights of expression 
and his words clambered slowly after it. 



114 The Heart of Monadnock 

"Say! it let's me in for a whole lot!" he 
suddenly concluded with the air of a man 
holding in excited horses. He got up from 
the rock lumberingly and brushed off his 
clothes mechanically. There was a new 
look in his eyes as he glanced slowly from 
side to side of the fair expanse, and then 
turned a searching gaze aloft to the peaks. 

"Something up here in this air — I guess 
it is — that makes you think of things." 

The listener smiled enigmatically. 

"Yes — I notice it. I'm extremely inter- 
ested in that story. Too common, as you 
say. Yes, 'To understand is to forgive.' " 
He also glanced again at the mountain. 
Wise Old Titan! 

"Come on, now!" said the jewelry-dealer 
briskly. "Mornin's gettin' on. Up there, 
you say? Hanged if I see the way around 
that edge there. Looks as if you'd fall off; 
plenty of room when you get there? All 
right! If you say so." He settled his hat 
firmly on his head, thrust his map in his 



The Heart of Monadnock 115 

pocket, drew a profound sigh, and started 
for the little precipice. 

The Mountain-Lover found himself mov- 
ing on before him, with no conscious de- 
cision in his mind to do so. 

"I'll go up with you. I was not going in 
any particular direction this morning. No, 
not at all. I always enjoy it." 

The oddly assorted pair went up the first 
ascent, while the Mountain-Lover smiled 
again quizzically to himself. Most unex- 
pected listeners the old Titan found! But 
he was quite willing to do his own share 
when the opportunity insisted. 



116 The Heart of Monadnock 



VI 



The Mountain-Lover had been wandering 
along the Amphitheatre path again, and 
had left it at the broken gorge to climb 
straight over the rough head of this until he 
should come out behind the little height of 
Cranberry Crag. It was a friendly view of 
the Giant which one had here, absolutely 
different, as usual, from any other. He 
dropped down in one of his innumerable 
favorite lairs where he could gaze up with 
the welling devotion those gra)^ walls always 
inspired. . . As a thousand times before, 
the question came to his mind, why this 
small mountain was so inexpressibly dear; 
so intimate and so great a Teacher. He 
knew many great mountains; our own Adi- 
rondacks; the White Mountains; the North 



The Heart of Monadnock 117 

Carolina ranges tossing in their careless wil- 
derness; the Rockies in their magnificence; 
the young, sharp-edged peaks of the Alps. 
He loved them all with a broad, impersonal 
affection, but no one of them ever took hold 
of his very heart as did this intimate and 
personal Monadnock. This alone, in an in- 
explicable way, was like his 
"Life's ornament, 
"To mix itself with each event." 
There was an extraordinary graciousness 
about the mountain with all its strength and 
ruggedness; a friendliness, as if glad to let 
its garnered richness of wisdom flow out 
like healing balm on all who stretched out 
longing hands for its renewing. It had that 
graciousness of a great soul, that going 
through the Valley of Baca, had made of it a 
well, and not a draught of poison bitterness. 
. . . A great soul in which centres the har- 
vest of ripe experience and leadership; 
whose musings have delved deep into the 
unknowable, bringing back as from a treas- 
ure-house things beyond speech but which 



118 The Heart of Monadnock 

the yearning heart of another may yet re- 
ceive through some unknown osmose. 

The Mountain-Lover thought of the 
mighty ranges of the Alps; of icy Matter- 
horn piercing the sky in its imperial isola- 
tion ; of the Ice-Maiden in her white auster- 
ity standing hy the Monk with the Youth 
beyond, drawing her white skirts haugh- 
tily about her feet; of Mount Blanc in 
mighty majesty and cold pride of ex- 
panse. These drew and thrilled their dev- 
otees as the desire of the almost inacces- 
sible ever draws and thrills the heart of 
man for conquest. But did their devotees 
feel for these huge mountain-masses the 
depth of inexpressible tenderness and the 
personal longing and the sheer delight in in- 
timate beauty that the lovers of Monadnock 
felt for the Wise Old Titan? The watcher 
had never heard such expressed. Myriads 
of men were yearly drawn to the attempt of 
those austere heights of the Alps as if with 
a lodestone, but countless men had those 
grim peaks — as if with rage at the attempt 



The Heart of Monadnock 119 

for conquest — flung remorselessly back, 
down into their black crevasses, ever yawn- 
ing for victims, or buried them deep in their 
cruel white blankets, as relentlessly as East- 
ern deities sacrifice their worshippers. 

The Mountain-Lover felt their strange en- 
chantment, but it was only this "Great little 
mountain" that with its inexplicable per- 
sonal quality, that drew and held his heart. 

"Joy-giver and enjoyer," said Thoreau, 
looking deeply into Monadnock. The 
Mountain-Lover as he lay full length upon 
his water-worn cradle of rock, put his hand 
caressingly on its garnet-flecked sides, fancy- 
ing that the now purpling masses above him 
— how the lights quivered and changed ev- 
ery moment! — delighted in the wooing sun- 
light that crept along its crest and that it 
loved the dappled shadows that played en- 
dearingly with its crannies and recesses. He 
fancied as Wordsworth imagined of the 
moon, that with delight the deserted sum- 
mit must look around it "when the heavens 
are bare" and that in some mystic way it 



120 The Heart of Monadnock 

must flash back signals of joy and love and 
understanding to the far glimmering lakes 
lying in the scattered hollows of the fair 
country-side, their waters rippling in the 
midnight wind, tossing back the dancing 
stars, since their every drop had once ca- 
ressed his own rugged shoulders on their 
downward way. Oh, surely the brooding 
spirit of the mountain must rejoice in that 
far-flung beauty, while it lies there, chin on 
hand, waiting with flawless patience for 
heaven's perfect hour. . . The world 
drifted away as one gazed. 
"Hither we bring our insect miseries to thy 

rocks, 
"And the whole flight with folded wing 
"Vanish and end their murmuring." 

In the sight of that stately, willing pa- 
tience shall not one's own sorrow become, 
even to the sorrow-stricken, an impertinent 
thing? A thing that after all takes no more 
root in the world than the fleeting shadows 
on the rock's calm face? 



The Heart of Monadnock 121 

"Fretful child! In the time of thy 
trouble He shall hide thee in His pavilion! 
In the secret place of His dwelling He shall 
hide thee! He shall set thy foot upon a 
rock of stone." 

Surely a voice spoke. 



For three days a great storm had raged, 
and had retreated sullenly. The early morn- 
ing had shown its power still holding, but 
slowly the wind shifted and by noon the 
storm clouds had acknowledged themselves 
vanquished, reluctantly drawing off their 
massed cohorts. By noon, with incredible 
swiftness came golden light and radiance 
indescribable, filtering through the rain- 
scrubbed air, and a serenity that seemed to 
steep one's soul in its essence. It was like 
a miracle to see how swiftly the clouds had 
vanished from a sky of pure ultramarine. 

In a moment the Mountain-Lover was 
off for the heights of Jaffrey Overlook. It 



122 The Heart of Monadnock 

was sheer joy to spring briskly up tlie steep, 
wet path — no loitering today — up and up 
and up! Joy to be climbing again after 
three days of bondage in the house, except 
for brief excursions down the road to the 
gate, a mile and a half away. The woods 
were still drenched and the rich, indescrib- 
able odor of rejoicing earth fresh from its 
bath rose on every side. The few birds that 
August had left recalled their June jubila- 
tion in mad joy of living. The note of the 
hermit thrush came flutily from the direc- 
tion of Monte Rosa across the steep decliv- 
ity between. Everything was free again. 

The climber reached at last the spot he 
had in mind. It was a point of vantage that 
Thoreau loved, on the east side of the un- 
suspected, high-nestled little mountain mea- 
dow, in the middle of the small plateau 
which lies under the east flank of the sum- 
mit. He found his sheltering nook; a pew- 
like ledge with blueberries creeping close 
to his hand along the crevice between seat 
and back, and at his feet a little charming 



The Heart of Monadnock 123 

carpet of cranberries, matted and close and 
clean-cut, with glowing little globes of scar- 
let still yellow on the underside, hiding 
their unimagined spiciness in their firm pol- 
ished plumpness. The tiny shining leaves 
were a delight to the eye. 

In the middle foreground as one looked 
towards the summit lay the swampy little 
meadow with every shade of russet and 
brown and red and pale green, rejoicing the 
artist. Beyond it rose flanking walls and 
broad bed-rock surfaces; the meadow 
stretched to the edge of the torn rocks of 
the interjacent gorge which lies like a rough 
knife-slash close under towering heights. 
The sweep of the mountain from this point 
is perhaps the most splendid vision one may 
obtain of it; precipices, now sharp, now 
slanting ; bare cliff basking in the sun ; deep 
little black recesses in its rent sides ; incred- 
ibly ancient, determined little spruces knot- 
ting themselves into crannies and cracks and 
clenching every vantage-point with their 
tough roots, their dark green embroidered 



124 The Heart of Monadnock 

against the grayish-purple background; and 
surmounting all, the bold and splendid out- 
line clearly etched against the dazzling sky. 

The climber had the mountain to himself. 
The storm had cleared too recently for any 
one but himself to be abroad. For three days 
had the rain lashed furiously that granite 
mass, and so deeply had the clouds envel- 
oped it that only at brief moments when mad 
winds flung aside the obscuring veil could it 
be seen rising vast, black, inscrutable. 
There towered the mountain, calmly biding 
its time. The fury of the wind could not 
stir it; the rage of the lightning could not 
affect it ; the mighty artillery of the thunder 
left it unmoved. 

Now that the storm had passed, Monad- 
nock rose again against the blue, "busy with 
its sky affairs," absolutely undisturbed, ab- 
solutely peaceful. What mattered the might 
of wind and driving storm? They had 
passed. So had they always passed. All 
was as if they had not been. To the watcher 



The Heart of Monadnock 125 

on the stone seat words floated into his con- 
sciousness. 

"The storms can endure but for a night. 
Peace comes with the morning. Oh, soul! 
tarry thou the Lord's leisure! Be strong 
and He shall comfort thine heart!" 

Surely a voice spoke. 

Above towered the unshaken, sunflushed 
mightiness, shining with countless, thread- 
like rills tricMing down every crevice or 
slipping over broad slants in transparent, 
glinting sheets. There was the message 
again — one of unassailable peace; of uncon- 
quered endurance. The storm was over. 
What matter if it came again? It would 
pass again. Some things are to be fought, 
but some must be endured. So one cannot 
fight storms ; one lives through them. Shall 
one rage in bitterness against the tempests 
of life? With that bitterness and resent- 
ment which crumbles all our power to dust? 
Do not the hard things we bear go as com- 
pletely to the fashioning of man as the hard 
things we do? If the muscles of the soul 



126 The Heart of Monadnock 

demand conflict to strengthen them, the 
lungs of the soul require tlie steady intake of 
the breath of endurance. Bunyan, who por- 
trayed the Hill Difficulty up which the soul 
must toil, also painted the Dark Valley of 
the Shadow of Death through which it must 
pass; here it meets not demons to be con- 
quered, but riving sorrows to be borne. 
There is nothing to fight. Everything to en- 
dure. Through the quagmire of agony must 
the stumbling feet tread — and one lives on 
as best one may. But — the end comes. 

While we are in the world it is the way of 
the world that storms will come. Let them 
come. 

The father of the Mountain-Lover had 
been a clergyman and his training had been 
in the Theological Seminary under the keen 
and wise old Bishop Williams of Connecti- 
cut. A favorite if enigmatical piece of ad- 
vice he frequently gave to ''His Boys," as he 
loved to call his students, was this : 

"My boys," he would say to some beloved 
group at parting, "you will appreciate this 



The Heart of Monadnock 127 

piece of advice more when you are older 
than you do now, but I want you to remem- 
ber it. It is this : when it rains — let it rain.^^ 

The climber, who had heard the story 
from his father many times, himself appre- 
ciated the sage, calm wisdom of this simple 
advice more deeply as the years passed. 
This afternoon the words returned to him 
with renewed meaning, as he looked deeply 
into the heart of Monadnock. That counsel 
was what the mountain whispered. When 
it rained — let it rain. How could anything 
so transient as even the most raging tempest 
affect its inner, inscrutable calm? . . . 
Even as one gazed, its ineffable peace, its 
unshakable serenity like a benediction shed 
themselves upon the heart. 

The sunset drew on. Changing colors be- 
gan to play caressingly over the rocky cliffs 
which slowly grew rosy-heliotrope, as are 
the violet-wreathed hills about old Athens. 
The emerald spruces took on a softer, 
warmer green; the mellow leaves of the 
maples far below were drenched in golden 



128 The Heart of Monadnock 

light. Every moment the values changed. 
The poignant distant note of the hermit- 
thrush thrilled through the air. . . . The 
glorious colors deepened. To the west the 
sky ahove the horizon was palest green with 
long-drawn clouds lying between golden 
strips of apparent sea; above, the clouds 
melted into turquoise and then by mysteri- 
ous gradations into salmon and into fla- 
mingo pink and deep rose and flame color. 
Overhead ail was soft purplish tones. And 
well the watcher knew that such color, such 
piercing beauty must have had tempest pre- 
ceding them. 

The Wise Old Giant spoke softly to his 
listener. 

"So the storm passes. Suppose trouble 
and disaster and crushing disappointment 
and shattering disillusion sweep over your 
soul. Suppose they even strip you bare as 
my riven sides were stripped bare by fire 
and flood long years ago. What matter? It 
all passes. You can only lose what was not 
truly yours. New beauty, new hopes, new 






The Heart of Monadnock 129 

development will come. Keep your feet 
steady; your head above the clouds. It 
passes!" 

Yes — it passes!" repeated the listener. 
Thank God! Eternity is not here!" 

He turned his meditative gaze from west 
to south and east. He seemed to be alone in 
a world of unbelievable beauty, bathed in 
molten, golden light which like a palpable 
thing might have flowed from the throne of 
God. The far hills of Vermont looked like 
fairy transparent lines, distance melting be- 
hind distance, as the sun sank. 

"The storm passes! God is behind the 
storm — somewhere. " 

He threw an intent look across the huge, 
wide-stretched shoulders of the Monadnock, 
all drawing up into that central stability. 
He thought of that solid rock of which he 
saw only the crest, reaching far down into 
the bosom of the earth, part and substance 
of the very framework of the globe whereon 
he trod. 



130 The Heart of Monadnock 

"It is this sense of an unshakable foun- 
dation that gives the conviction that the old 
Titan is unassailable," he mused. "His foun- 
dations are a part of the earth itself. That 
knowledge is what we so yearningly crave 
in life. We reach out so longingly for what 
is unshakable; for something on which the 
soul can stand; for something that is 
founded upon a Rock. Where is it!" 

He went back in mind slowly over those 
now distant, soul-shattering days of 1914, 
when convictions of civilization, of Chris- 
tianity, of God Himself, were rocking diz- 
zily before a stunned and paralyzed world. 
What an outcry had gone up in those first 
terrific, mad months, that the whole elab- 
orate fabric of life was a blank, dead fail- 
ure. Men had gone around with haunted 
eyes as if they had laid their dearest in a 
black grave, with no hope of resurrection 
beyond. Their hopes, their ideals, their 
very faith were being buried fathoms deep. 

But the slow change crept on. Even be- 
for the end, even in the face of all the 



The Heart of Monadnock 131 

heaped-up horror; of all the eager, un- 
shrinking sacrifice of magnificent youth ; in 
the face of the shuddering knowledge 
brought to the ravaged hearts of mothers 
and the sharp-edged burdens of fathers — 
yes, in the very teeth of the storm while it 
raged most fiercely there strangely crept 
over the world an ever-deepening sense of a 
vast Power of love and mercy behind the 
crash and the ruin. A Power that would 
one day vindicate itself. A conviction of an 
unassailable foundation. Whence came that 
irresistible, intangible conviction that was 
absorbed into the very fibre of human life? 
And now that the tempest of war was spent, 
even though the bark of human life felt it- 
self still tossed in the long ground-swell that 
follows the storm, even though waves of ex- 
travagance and mad unrest and crime still 
broke on the shore— yet the inner heart of 
man was dimly conscious of the Presence in 
human life of One who in quiet majesty of 
Power had once said to the waves, "Peace! 
Be still!" 



132 The Heart of Monadnock 

There was Eternal Power. There was an 
Eternal Foundation. 

He listened. Again the Mountain spokor 
"Sometimes all the accretions of life, 
which are not true growth, need to be 
stripped away. Men saw not my founda- 
tion rock, until flame and flood stripped 
them bare. War has stripped bare the souls 
of men, and beneath — if they choose — they 
will find their feet are upon a Rock. The 
Rock of a faith in the power of Good it- 
self. ... It is beyond reason. Only feel- 
ing can apprehend it. . . It is only when 
your soul is utterly still that it can hear God 
speak — and He speaks not with the tongue 
of humanity. . . . When the storm breaks, 
let it rage. ... In quietness and confi- 
dence shall be your strength. In that 
strength you shall do the work of ten. . . . 
The confidence of a mighty Purpose work- 
ing out its mysterious will — this shall bring 
you through, unhurt of soul — though the 
storms rage. ... If you believe that God is 



The Heart of Monadnock 133 

in His heaven, must not all eventually be 
right with the world? Be not fearful, oh, ye 
of little faith!" 

A soft, elusive breeze that seemed to 
Lring with it the very soul of the words, fell 
on the listener. Thoughts gathered that 
were no longer translatable into human 
speech — but the soul knew them. ... At 
last he rose slowly, and came with many 
pauses down the cliffs through the lingering 
unearthly beauty. Each radiant day seemed 
like a gem he might not find again. From 
ledge to ledge he came, with a warm sense 
of comfort and healing and strange assur- 
ance springing up within him. As he de- 
scended, some lines of Scollard's drifted 
through his mind. 

"Come, courage, come, and take me by the hand; 
"Gird me with faith; the radiant faith to see 
"Beyond the darkness— Immortality. 
"Thus may the gulf be spanned!" 

Something that transcended words had 
passed from the heart of the mountain to 
the heart of the man; ineffable peace welled 
up in his breast as he came at last through 



134 The Heart of Monadnock 

ihe darkening woods, along the paths famil- 
iar even in the dusk; a healing touch of 
halm had been laid on a jagged cut in his 
heart that had hardly yet ceased to bleed. 



The Heart of Monadnock 135 



VII 



It was Sunday. Perhaps The Mountain- 
Lover only fancied it but it seemed to him 
that everything on the mountain knew what 
day it was. Down in the world below Sun- 
day might be a hurrying, bustling day, 
where one turned but from one set of activ- 
ities to another, but up here in this remote- 
ness he thought that all the flitting birds 
and chattering squirrels, the velvet blue- 
berries and the scarlet cranberries, the 
cushiony moss and the rock-ferns and the 
ruby bunchberries making their violent car- 
pet of flame and green, and every dancing 
leaf and every shiny needle and brown- 
scaled cone — all knew and shouted out the 
Day. A special day. A day of peace. 



136 The Heart of Monadnock 

Today the Mountain-Lover betook him- 
self early to the heights, for on Sundays the 
dwellers on the plains would seek the moun- 
tain in great numbers and he liked to be 
far away, and have it for his own day. He 
decided to spend the night also on the cliffs 
— as he frequently did — and with sand- 
wiches and chocolate in his pocket and a 
blanket roll on his back he set forth gladly. 
A leisurely climb it would be, having the 
day — and the night — before him, and far 
out on the Dublin Ridge he meant to go. 
That was always the loneliest part of the 
mountain. 

For three or four days he had been forced 
to be in New York on perplexing and intri- 
cate business and had come back late the 
evening before. His tired nerves still jan- 
gled with the clamor and rush and tumult 
and heat and drive of the restless, swarming 
hive. What delight to come back to his 
mountain again, and to pass thus high, high^ 
up into the open, into an utterly silent world 



The Heart of Monadnock 137 

of sapphire and emerald and gold! Tran- 
quil, far-spread silence ! 

He loitered over the Jaffrey Ridge trail 
with ever fresh delight; past the tawny, 
swampy, rock-girt meadow, with its fluffy 
white cottongrass swinging and swaying its 
snowy, tufted head with every flirting 
breeze; up broad ledge after broad ledge, 
with the east and west horizon line of the 
ridge slipping back as he approached it, un- 
til suddenly he topped it and stood upon its 
crest. Instantly the far northern view lay 
unrolled before him. Melting in billowing 
lines to the dim, hazy outline that was Mt. 
Washington, the mountains flowed silently 
away in soundless waves of azure and helio- 
trope till they broke against the sky. A 
long gaze here — like a deep draught of water 
to a parched throat — then the rambler went 
on down from the crest, to the north, where 
the slope sank abruptly. He stopped again, 
drinking in profound breaths of the crystal 
dustless air, that renewed him like wine. 
More and more deeply did he breathe it in. 



138 The Heart of Monadnock 

until every fibre of his body seemed newly 
alive and the crisp buoyancy of the atmos- 
phere seemed to filter through every tissue. 
All fatigue of mind and body fell away like 
a cloak. He was a new man. 

He came to the Sarcophagus, that mighty 
boulder perched so casually in its place that 
it is hard to understand — from the lay of 
the slopes — just how it could have been 
borne here; for though it lies in a long de- 
pression as far as the main sweep of the 
Dublin Ridge is concerned, at this particular 
point the ledges rise to it. What Titanic 
forces of ice and water in those dim, by- 
gone ages of the Glacier days, had borne up 
hither this monster? The Mountain-Lover 
— who was no geologist — had mused often 
over the puzzle of it. On the floor of the 
deep little depression between this point 
and some cliffs to the west, in inextricable 
confusion, lay innumerable small rocks, 
sharp-edged as if quarried, but the only dy- 
namite used had been the irresistible power 



The Heart of Monadnock 139 

of the frost, first cracking, then bursting 
asunder rock after rock, with clean-cut 
slashes. 

The Mountain-Lover passed on his way 
up the next small peak and down again and 
up the next, disdaining today the cairns 
that silently suggested easier ways around. 
He wanted the roughness and the climbing 
and the highest points. Far up here the 
world once more seemed large enough to 
move in freely without irritating contact 
with other rasped souls. 

He gained at last the topmost point in the 
long reach of the Dublin shoulder and sigh- 
ing with satisfaction, he sank down on the 
clean bare ground against a rock to let his 
eyes feast their fill. He could see to all sides 
save to the southwest where rose the vast 
bulk of the mountain itself, shutting away 
that view. His eyes dwelt in profound con- 
tent on point after point; far below the gay 
little lakes gleamed with their jewel points 
of light; white ribbons of roads wound their 
curving way about the hills, vanishing now 



140 The Heart of Monadnock 

and then in the woods ; tiny villages sent up 
white spires and suggestions of roofs. The 
only moving things in sight were the two 
eagles, soaring high, but their flight, calm as 
the mountain itself, steady, swift, circling, 
mounting ever higher in great spirals, and as 
ever on motionless, widespread pinions, 
was even strangely restful with its sugges- 
tion of effortless, limitless power. 

The atmosphere was translucently bril- 
liant, as if poured out like molten gold. 
And the infinite quiet ! The resting watcher 
seemed to bathe in it as in a waveless ocean 
of utter tranquillity. His soul rested against 
it. His mind drifted out on it. . , His 
eyes dwelt on the everlasting hills. In that 
sea of stillness his musings trailed away into 
vague thoughts that did not rise into words. 
So utterly, marvellously still! What was the 
quality that made the silence of mountains 
and of deserts so mysteriously different from 
other silences? He absently realized that 
even miles away from any great city, al- 
though to the outer ear there may be no 



The Heart of Monadnock 141 

noise of any kind — no noises caused by the 
needs of humanity — still one is not beyond 
the physical recognition of the ceaseless, im- 
palpable vibrations that are the basis of 
sound. Though these may be too broad in 
wave or too few in number for the ear to 
receive their impact as sound, they still 
reach the nerves as sensation, though not 
consciously registered. 

The Mountain-Lover closed his eyes for a 
moment aud he visioned the atmosphere 
for many miles around a great city as an 
ocean of thick-crowding currents; currents 
of vibration not merely of words but of the 
myriad vibrations that accompany any mo- 
tion whatever of animal or mechanical life; 
of every mode of locomotion; of every ham- 
mering beat of machinery; even of every 
footfall. He could see these currents surg- 
ing to and fro, beating on every brick and 
stone and wooden thing, flung back by the 
force of their impact along with a thousand 
others that they themselves brought into 
being — crossing, fighting, conflicting, con- 



142 The Heart of Monadnock 

quering and being conquered; rising into 
the speed necessary to smite the ear as sound 
or to hurt it with their piercing sharpness 
or their mad confusion; sinking again with 
distance out of the region of pure sound but 
still storming the body in every pulsating 
nerve. What wonder that we still feel the 
hubbub and the turmoil of these fighting 
currents ! Only far, far away from all these, 
on mountains or prairie or desert do the 
quivering human nerves cease to feel and to 
respond to this tumult of vibration to which, 
though it is never lost, we are mercifully at 
last no longer attuned. Then come peace — 
and silence. With them, rest unto the soul. 

Out on this sea of tranquillity the soul of 
the pondering man floated. The Spirit that 
brooded near seemed to smile upon him as 
if waiting for the conceptions it was breath- 
ing to his inner being to rise through his 
consciousness and clothe themselves with 
words. 

"Joy it is, son that loves me, to come from 
the dust and restlessness of the lower world! 



The Heart of Monadnock 143 

There the unceasing business of daily con- 
cerns sets the dust of the highway of life 
awhirl and all this fills the lungs and blurs 
the vision. Ground out of the rasping con- 
tacts of life, how all the grit of idle words 
and pettinesses, the jealousies and bits of 
malice and cruel slander choke the heart! 
How the crash of competition deafens the 
ears ! You human beings grow to take these 
for granted, hardly realizing that you are 
being slowly stifled with the gross air in 
which so much of life must be passed, and 
that you are hearing only the mad din of 
the commonplace. Scarcely do you even 
realize that anything has been amiss, until 
you find yourself away from it all, when 
something catches you up into the upper 
realms of the soul where you can see all 
things clearly and hear the harmonies of 
celestial chords. 

"Just as your body needs the freshness 
and purity and freedom from material dust, 
even so your soul needs to mount to sunny 
heights far distant if it would live and 



144 The Heart of Monadnock 

breathe and live. . . You need these moun- 
tain-tops of your inner being. Here, undis- 
tracted, you may look deep into innermost 
recesses and here you may sort out your 
ambitions and your aims and your accom- 
plishments, and see them in their true val- 
ues, unblurred by the world's opinions. 
Know them as they are; some good, some 
bad. . . Hard it is for those who know not 
this Silence to be still enough to hear God 
speak." 

The Mountain-Lover raised his eyes 
yearningly to the heights. Christ went into 
"high places" apart, to pray. He also needed 
this Silence. 

Time passed. He did not note it. There 
came 

"The marching clouds 

"And the talking sun 

"And the high blue afternoon." 

Hours slipped by unheeded. Far below 
the level of awareness the Spirit of the 
Mountain was bringing to the pondering 
man untranslatable perceptions. Voiceless 
music rang to the depths of his soul. 



The Heart of Monadnock 145 

Slowly, deeply as the miracle of sunset 
approached, there stole across his conscious- 
ness sensations thrilling him to the core. He 
began to feel deep within him the profound 
throb of the mountain-heart itself; its quiet, 
beating pulse. The far-rolling hills were 
undulating with its rhythm, and his own 
heart was pulsing in unison as if he himself 
were caught up to the Universal Soul. . . 
As he listened, awestruck, the throbbing 
beat gravely strengthened until it became 
like a mighty organ-note to which the flow- 
ing hills responded more and more clearl)^ 
with their own distant chorus. Deeper and 
higher outspread the broad, majestic har- 
mony until the whole universe seemed filled 
with music of wild, ineffable sweetness. 

The man lifted his eyes again unto the 
heights which lay solitary in the sunset. 
There, to the vision of his soul, the cliffs 
gradually seemed alive in their solitude with 
radiant, shadowy forms ethereal in unspeak- 
able beauty, swaying like thistle-down in the 
gold of the setting sun. An unearthly. 



146 The Heart of Monadnock 

pearly light seemed to gather around that 
joyous, floating throng, made visible from 
an unseen, enveloping world; a listening, 
surrounding universe of help and comfort 
and strength without limit. God. 

And this white and shining throng were 
themselves swelling the song of the hidden 
world — a life-chorus that rolled and surged 
up to Heaven itself in mighty chords. 
Words seemed at last to shape themselves — 
the words of David, Mountain-Lover and 
God-Lover. 

"Why faint, my soul? Why doubt Jeho- 
vah's aid? 

"Thy God the God of Mercy yet shall prove. 

"Within His courts thy thanks shall yet be 
paid, 

"Unquestioned be His faithfulness and 
love." 

The peace of God which passeth all un- 
derstanding lay upon the mountain and 
upon the heart of the man. 

The End. 



Spring 



HetloBoeki 



MatterhornS 




HOTEL 



Surprise' 




Seat riS Emerson 

^»!s^ Seat 



Mt.Rosa 




'f^Pulpit 



'■ Four Spots 



% 



■*i Inspiration 
' Rock 



Halfway 
Spring 



>,\ Purgatory 



Dingle Dell 
Brook Crossing « 




